THE

WHITE SHIP
BY CHINGIZ AITMATOV
TRANSLATED BY MIRRA GINSBURG
 Introduction
Chingiz Aitmatov, born in 1928, a native of Kirghizia, writes both in
Russian and in Kirghiz. One of the few truly talented writers to have
emerged from the government's drive to transform the non-Russian
nationalities in Russia into parts of the total Communist state, he is also one
of the tiny handful that has managed to retain a good deal of originality and
artistic integrity.

While most of the writers of the newly "modernized" nationalities

produce crude versions of the dreary "Socialist Realist" fiction required by
the Soviet rulers—fiction that is little more than propaganda of the current
Communist line Aitmatov writes stories and novels about living people as
he sees and feels them. He does not compose eulogies to the glorious "new
Soviet man" created by the Party and the Communist society, nor does he
confine his vision to what he is officially, expected to see.

Aitmatov is profoundly rooted in his people's past, as well as their

present. And he writes of what he knows with a simplicity and tenderness
that bring his prose close to the poetry of the ancient tales and epics of his
people. He has won for himself a place both in modern literature and in the
splendid tradition of Kirghiz folklore, which he knows and so obviously
loves.

The Kirghiz people, somewhat over two million, occupy an area in

Soviet Central Asia that borders on China in the southeast and Kazakhstan
in the north. For the past two thousand years they have been overrun by a
variety of conquerors and engaged in many wars and migrations of their
own. In the distant past they had a flourishing culture, traded actively with
China and the Arab countries, and had their own writing, which is still
found on burial stones. Their ancient culture has long been obliterated, their
writing lost, their wealth plundered. Yet there remains a vast oral literature
that testifies to the people's pride and strength, humor and wisdom. A
Mongol-Turkic people, Moslem since the ninth century A.D., they have
traditionally led a nomadic existence, raising cows, sheep, horses, and
goats, and only marginally engaging in agriculture.

Kirghizia was annexed by Russia a little less than a hundred years ago.
At that time, most of its people were illiterate and poor, living in subjection
to the beys—the rich land and cattle owners—and to various khans and
princelings. It was only in 1936, almost twenty years after the Russian
revolution, that the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established. It
was also after the revolution that a system of schools was gradually set up,
eliminating most of the illiteracy and providing the language with a written
alphabet—first Arabic, then Latin, and later Cyrillic. And it was then that
the modern Kirghiz literature began to develop.

As everywhere else in Russia, the government applied a great deal of

energy to extirpating religion and its established institutions as supporters of
the old way of life. Along with schooling, literacy, and—in certain areas—
improvement in material conditions came many conflicts. The educated
younger generation turned its back in contempt not only upon religion, but
also upon the ancient traditions connected with it, and frequently preceding
it. Many ancient monuments were destroyed, oral literature was neglected,
and despite the declared official policy of encouraging national minorities,
the sense of national identity was frowned on (and often persecuted) as
divisive and counterrevolutionary.

Some of these problems are reflected in The White Ship, which

produced a violent controversy when it first appeared in January 1970 in the
then still liberal Soviet monthly Novy Mir, edited by the poet Alexander
Tvardovsky.

What enraged the critics most was Chingiz Aitmatov's courage in

revealing—in microcosm—some of the brutality, corruption, indifference,
frustration, and suffering that still exist in Soviet Russia, as, indeed they do
throughout the human world. In Communist Russia, the cry went up, such
things cannot exist.

And yet, The White Ship—written chiefly from the view-point of a

lonely, imaginative child—reveals precisely these evils. It also reveals
nobility of spirit, love, kindness, and selfless dedication.
 The White Ship, a moving and absorbing novel, is rich on many levels
beyond the story itself. Aitmatov raises in it fundamental questions of good
and evil, of ethics—in the relations between man and man, man and nature,
man and his past (tradition, religion, legend—all that gives a national group
its own unique character). He also examines the problem of power and its
effect both on those who have it and those who don't.

Although Aitmatov avoids generalizations, his book can also be read

as a parable. Orozkul, the forest overseer and head of the tiny forest post
where the story unfolds, is, in a sense, the carrier of evil. The good and
innocent are helpless against him. The brutal will of the powerful prevails
and destroys both the good and the innocent.

But the prime tenet that rules Soviet literature—Socialist Realism—

demands that all fiction be "optimistic" and "life- affirming"; that it teach a
lesson and lead to action; that it help in the building of the Communist state.

From this naive and vicious position, which has stifled all valid art in
Russia for many decades, attacks upon The White Ship were launched in a
number of magazines and newspapers. True, there were also many
defenders of the novel. Among the participants in the controversy were
writers, critics, and readers who wrote in to register their views. The level
of the controversy was almost wholly superficial and utilitarian. The only
assertion of the artist's need and right to create according to his vision came
from Aitmatov himself, in a long letter of reply to his critics that appeared
in the Literary Gazette. The rest of the articles and letters argued chiefly the
question of whether the novel was truly pessimistic and hopeless, or
whether, by exposing evil, it called upon the readers to fight it.

Another "sin" of the book is that it reveals how deeply the traditional
strain still permeates the lives and minds of men—especially, perhaps, of
those who live on the land, and in areas away from the "civilizing"—and
dehumanizing—influence of the big cities and of the strenuous "rationalist"
propaganda of Communist officialdom.

It is extremely interesting that, in the matter of tradition, the novel

shows a skip of a whole generation, or perhaps even of two generations.
Orozkul, the personification of the Stalinist official longing for the "good
old times" when the powerful were "properly respected," dismisses all
imagination, all love for the traditional, as nonsense. Many of the younger
men, "educated" by the party and the army, also dismiss tradition as old
wives' tales. Yet, there are also young men like the ex-soldier who drives a
tractor at the Soviet farm, who comments poignantly on the dissolution of
the old clan ties: "We Bugans don't even know one another anymore."

Aitmatov skillfully weaves into his book the old and the new. Beneath
the story of The White Ship runs, as a major theme, the lovely ancient tale
of the Horned Mother Deer— the totem figure of the Bugu clan, protectress
of her people and bringer of fertility. This tale is handed on from
grandfather to grandson. The very young and the very old become
continuous links in the interrupted chain of tradition.

Significantly, the tragic ending of the book comes when the old man is
compelled by those in power to kill the sacred Mother Deer, the central
image of the tale. The boy is robbed of the only two bright, solid figures in
his life. Racked by fever, crushed, despairing, sickened by the sight of the
brutish humans devouring the magic, ancient Mother, he walks into the
river, seeking fulfillment of his own secret legend. He will become a fish
and swim far, far away, to seek out the proud, glorious white ship he has
seen sailing upon the distant lake and the father who had long ago
abandoned and forgotten him.

Many of the critics were outraged by this "suicide" of a child. Failing

to see the book as a many-faceted parable, some of the letter writers argued
indignantly that the parentless boy should have been placed in an
orphanage, that his grandfather should have been sent to an old age home,
and that the uncle, Orozkul, tyrannical, corrupt, and brutal, should have
been sent to prison.

The criticism of Aitmatov's literary colleagues was not on a much

higher level. The boy's action, some said, was due to a morbid mind and a
warped sense of reality, resulting from his isolation in a tiny village.
Aitmatov was accused of saying that reality and beauty were incompatible.
He was attacked for permitting evil to triumph over goodness and beauty.
His novel was criticized for "leading to hopelessness and despair," for not
pointing to bright, "realistic" alternatives, for showing the evil as strong and
the good as weak. And so on, in the same vein.

To these criticisms Aitmatov answers patiently: the death of a hero

need not be a defeat—it may be a victory. And what remains need not be
utter darkness and the executioner. For when the book ends, there remains
—the reader and what happens within him. But the crux of his reply is a
clear statement of a writer's duty to himself and to his art: "Some readers
ask, 'Was it not in the author's power to arrange his hero's fate differently?'
No, it was not in the author's power. The logic of a work of art follows its
own rules, and these rules are not subject to the author's will."

Elsewhere, Aitmatov wrote: "In art, facts cannot replace the truth of
character. . . . The living core of every work of art is man."

Unfortunately, as in so many other cases in Soviet Russia, there was a

sad postscript to the controversy provoked by The White Ship. When the
novel appeared later in 1970, as part of a collection of Aitmatov's works, it
contained some changes in its final pages, attempting to bring it closer to
some of his critics' ideas. Clearly, the author was compelled to violate the
spirit of his own work as the price for its publication in book form. The
Orozkuls are obviously still the masters of Soviet life. And this is the
tragedy of the author, as well as of his hero.

This translation of The White Ship follows its original version, as

published in Novy Mir. The novel, as the author intended it to be, carries its
own truth, and the reader, I hope, will recognize and welcome it, and come
to love this powerful and tender book.

MIRRA GINSBURG
 1
He had two tales. One was his own, unknown to anybody else. The
other he had heard from grandfather. Then one day both were gone. That's
what this story is about.

He was seven years old, going on eight.

First came the schoolbag. A black imitation-leather schoolbag, with a

shiny metal snaplock that slipped into a catch. With an outside pocket for
small things. A most extraordinary ordinary schoolbag. That was, perhaps,
the beginning of it all.

Grandfather bought it from the visiting store truck, which made the
rounds of the cattle breeders in the mountains and occasionally looked in on
the forest post in the San-Tash Valley.

Beyond the post, the forest preserve rose densely up the slopes and
ravines to the mountaintops. There were only three households here, but
once in a long while the store truck would visit the foresters.

The only boy in the post, he was always the first to see the truck.

"It's coming!" he would shout into the doors and windows. "The store
truck is coming!"

The road that wound its way here from the banks of the Issyk-Kul
Lake ran through deep gorges, along the riverbank, over rocks and gulleys,
all the way. It was a very difficult road. When it came to Outlook Mountain,
it went up slantwise from the bottom of the canyon, then made a long
descent down the steep, bare slope toward the forest post. Outlook
Mountain was near the post. In the summer, the boy climbed up there
almost daily to watch the lake through his binoculars. And the road could
be seen from the mountain as plain as the palm of his hand—the curves and
turns, the rare pedestrians, the riders, and, of course, the cars.
 This time—it was a hot summer day—the boy was swimming in his
pond when he caught sight of the truck raising dust as it came down the
slope. The pond was at the edge of the river, where the water ran shallow
over the gravel bottom. Grandpa had dammed it up with rocks. If it were
not for the dam, who knows, the boy may have been drowned a long time
ago. And, as grandma kept saying, the river would have washed his bones
white and carried them away to Issyk-Kul, where fish and other water
creatures would be staring at them. And nobody would search for him or
mourn him, because there was no reason why a boy should be forever
fooling mound in the water. So far, he hadn't drowned. If he did— who
knows—maybe grandma really would not run to save him. If he was kin, at
least, she said, but he was only a stranger. And a stranger, no matter how
you feed him or look after him, remains a stranger. A stranger . . . But what
if he didn't want to be a stranger? And why was he the stranger? Maybe it
wasn't he, but she, who was the stranger?

But all this will come later in the story—this, and grandfather's dam. . .
.

Well, then, he caught sight of the store truck as it came downhill,

trailing a cloud of dust behind it. And he leaped with excitement, as if he
knew he would get that schoolbag. He ran out of the water and quickly
pulled his pants over his skinny thighs. Still wet and blue—the water in the
river was cold—he hurried down the path to be the first to announce the
coming of the truck.

The boy ran fast, jumping over low shrubs and going around boulders
that were too big to jump across. He did not stop anywhere—not by the tall
grasses, nor by the rocks, even though he knew that they were not plain
grasses and rocks. They could take offense or even trip him up. "The store
truck's coming, I'll be back," he cried as he ran past the "resting camel"—
the reddish, humped granite boulder sunk chest-deep in the earth. At
ordinary times the boy never passed by without patting the camel on the
hump. He patted it with a light, familiar gesture, as grandpa patted his
short- tailed gelding, as if to say, "Wait here, I must be off on business."
Another of his boulders was a "saddle"—half-black, half-white, with a dip
in the middle—and he could ride it like a horse. There was also a "wolf,"
brown-gray, hoary, with powerful shoulders and a heavy brow. The boy
would stalk it on all fours and take aim at it. But his favorite was the "tank"
—a huge, massive boulder right at the river's edge, the sand and gravel
washed away around it. At any moment, the "tank" would plunge into the
water, and the river would boil and churn and rise in fierce white-crested
waves. That was what tanks did in the movies—down from the bank into
the water, and on and on. The boy saw movies very seldom and therefore
remembered everything. His grandfather sometimes took him to see a
movie at the livestock-breeding farm in the neighboring village beyond the
mountain. This was how a "tank" appeared by the water, ready to rush
across the river. There were also other rocks, some "bad," some "kind,"
some even "sly," or "silly."

Among the plants there were also "favorites," "brave ones," "fearful,"
"evil ones," and a variety of others. The thornbush, for example, was the
chief enemy. The boy fought it dozens of times every day, but there seemed
no end to their war—the bush continued to grow and multiply. The wild
convolvulus, though also a mere weed, was the cleverest and merriest plant.
Its flowers welcomed the sun in the morning better than any others. Other
grasses did not know anything: morning, evening—it didn't matter to them.
But the convolvulus—the moment it felt the warm rays of the sun it opened
its eyes and laughed. First one eye, then another, then all the furled flowers
opened up. White, pale blue, lilac, every color. . . . And if you sat quietly,
quietly near them, it seemed that they were silently whispering among
themselves about something. Even the ants knew this. In the morning they
ran along the sterns and flowers, squinting in the sunshine and listening to
what the flowers were saying. Perhaps they told each other about their
dreams?

In the daytime, at noon, the boy liked to climb into the thickets of
long-stemmed, reedlike shiraldzhins. The shiraldzhins were tall; they had
no flowers, but they smelled good; and they grew in patches, gathering in
dense groups, allowing other plants to come near them. The shiraldzhins
were true friends, they offered the best hiding place, especially when you
were hurt and wanted to cry where nobody could see. They smelled like the
edge of a pinewood. It was hot and quiet among them, yet they did not shut
out the sky. You could stretch out on your back and stare into the sky. At
first, you could see nothing through the tears. But then the clouds would
come up above and do whatever you wanted them to do. The clouds knew
you were not happy, they knew you wanted to run away somewhere, to fly
away where nobody would ever find you. And then everybody would sigh
and moan: The boy is lost, where shall we find him now? And to prevent it,
to keep you from disappearing, to make you lie still and watch them, the
clouds would turn into anything you wished. The same clouds could turn
into many things. All you needed was to see what they were showing.

And it was quiet among the shiraldzhins, and they did not shut out the
sky. That's what they were like, the shiraldzhins, which smelled of hot pine.

There were many other things he knew about the grasses. Toward the
silvery feather grass down in the meadow, he had a tolerantly
condescending attitude. It was silly, that leather grass! Scatterbrained. Its
soft, silky tassels could not live without wind. All they did was wait to see
which way it blew, and then they bowed in the same direction. Not one or
two, but all together, the whole meadow, as at a command. And if it rained
or stormed, the feather grass went frantic, it did not know what to do, where
to hide. It tossed and flattened, pressed itself against the earth. If it had feet,
it surely would run away, just anywhere at all. But actually it was only
pretending. The moment the storm was over, the giddy tassels were back at
their game with the wind, bowing wherever it blew.

Alone, without playmates, the boy lived with the simple things around
him, and only the store truck could make him forget everything and rush to
meet it. After all, a store truck wasn't like stones and grasses. There wasn't a
thing you could not find in it!

By the time the boy reached home, the store truck was already entering
the yard behind the houses. The houses in the post faced the river. The front
yard passed directly into the slope that ran down to the bank, and on the
other side, across the river, the forest rose steeply from the washed-out
ravine up the mountainside. The only way to drive up to the houses was
from the back. If the boy had not made it in time, nobody would have
known that the store truck was already there.
 The men had all been gone since morning. The women were busy with
their household chores. And the boy ran to each open door, crying shrilly:

"It's here! The store truck is here!"

The women hurried to get the little money they had tucked away, and
ran out, each one racing to get there first. Even grandmother praised him:

"He's got a sharp eye, that boy!"

The boy felt proud, as if he had brought the store truck there himself.
He was happy because he had been first with the news, because he rushed
out with the women into the backyard, because he bustled with them at the
open doors of the truck. But they forgot him immediately. They were too
excited. All those goods—their eyes didn't know where to look first. There
were only three women: his grandma; Aunt Bekey his mother's sister and
the wife of the warden Orozkul, the most important man at the forest
station; and the young Guldzhamal, the wife of his helper Seidakhmat, with
her little girl in her arms. Only three women. But they fluttered about so
much, tugging at the goods and turning everything upside down, that the
salesman was obliged to ask them to wait their turn and stop chattering all
at once.

His words, however, had small effect on the women. At first they
grabbed everything. Then they began to make their elections. Then they
returned what they had chosen. They put things aside, tried them on,
debated among themselves, and asked the same questions over and over
again. One thing they did not like, another was too expensive, a third was
the wrong color . . . The boy stood at the side. He was bored now. The
expectation of something extraordinary, the first joy he felt when he had
caught sight of the truck on the mountainside, was gone now. The store
truck had suddenly turned into an ordinary truck filled with a lot of rubbish.

The salesman frowned. It didn't look as if those women were going to

buy anything. Why had he bothered driving through the mountains to this
godforsaken spot?
 And he was right. The women started to give up, their enthusiasm
waned, they suddenly seemed tired. They began to look for excuses.
Grandma complained about the lack of money. And without money, how
could you buy anything? Aunt Bekey did not dare to make a big purchase
without her husband. Aunt Bekey was the unhappiest woman on earth
because she had no children, and Orozkul beat her for that whenever he got
drunk. And this made grandfather suffer, too, for Aunt Bekey was
grandfather's daughter. She bought a few trifles and two bottles of vodka.
And that was too bad— she was making it worse for herself. Grandma
could not keep from hissing, so that the salesman would not hear:

"Asking for trouble?"

"I know what I'm doing," snapped Aunt Bekey.

"Fool," grandma whispered, gloating. If it were not for the salesman,

she would have given Aunt Bekey a piece of her mind. They were forever
bickering, those two.

Young Guldzhamal came to the rescue. She began to explain that her
Seidakhmat was going into town soon and he would need the money, so she
could not spend much now.

And so they bustled around the store truck, bought "a kopek's worth"
of goods, as the salesman said, and went back to their homes. What sort of
trade was that? The salesman spat after the women and began to arrange his
disordered wares, preparing to leave. Then he noticed the boy.

"What is it, roundhead?" he asked. The boy had protruding ears, a thin
neck, and a large round head. "Want to buy something? Hurry up, or I'll
close shop. D'you have any money?"

The salesman spoke at random, having nothing better to do, but the
boy answered respectfully:

"No, uncle, I have no money," and he shook his head.

 "I think you do," the salesman drawled, feigning disbelief. "You're all
rich around here, you're only pretending you're poor. . . . And what's in your
pocket, isn't that money?"

"No, uncle," the boy answered as sincerely and seriously as before,

turning out his torn pocket. (The other pocket was sewn up.)

"So you've lost your money. Look for it where you've ken playing,
you'll find it."

They were silent awhile.

"Whose boy are you?" the salesman asked. "Old Momun's?"

The boy nodded.

"His grandson, eh?"

"Yes," the boy nodded again.

“And where's your mother?"

The boy said nothing.

"She never writes, does she? I guess you don't know yourself?"

"I don't."

"And your father? You don't know either?"

The boy was silent.

"How is it, friend, you don't know anything?" the salesman chided.
"Oh, well, in that case, here." He held out a handful of candy. "And good-
bye to you."

The boy drew back shyly.

"Take it, take it. Don't hold me up. I've got to go."
 The boy put the candy in his pocket. He wanted to run after the truck,
to see it out to the road, and he called Baltek to go with him. Baltek was a
terribly lazy, shaggy dog. Orozkul always threatened to shoot him—why
keep such a dog, he said. But grandpa kept begging him to wait. They'd get
a sheep dog first, then he would take Baltek away somewhere. Baltek did
not care about anything. When he had eaten, he slept; when he was hungry,
he was forever toadying up to someone—his own masters, strangers, it
made no difference, so long as they would throw him something. That's
what kind of dog he was, this Baltek. But sometimes, out of boredom, he
would run after cars. True, never very far. He'd just get going, then
suddenly turn back and amble home. An unreliable dog. Still, whatever he
was like, it was a lot more fun to run with a dog than without one.

Quietly, so the salesman would not see, the boy threw Baltek one
candy. "Look now," he warned the dog, "we'll run a long way." Baltek
whimpered and wagged his tail, waiting for more. But the boy did not dare
to throw him another candy: the man might get offended; after all, he didn't
give him a whole handful for the dog.

And then his grandfather appeared. The old man had been out to the
beehives. From there he could not see the yard behind the houses. And now
he just happened to come up in time, while the store truck was still there.
Just by chance. Or else his grandson would not have gotten the schoolbag.
The boy was lucky that day.

Old Momun, whom clever people had nicknamed Obliging Momun,

was known to everyone in the district, and he knew everyone. He had
earned his nickname by his invariable friendliness, his constant readiness to
do things for people, to help everyone. And yet, his diligence was not
appreciated, just as gold would not be appreciated if it were given away
free. Nobody treated Momun with the respect due people of his age. He was
treated without ceremony. At funeral feasts for eminent old men of the
Bugu clan—Momun was a Bugan and very proud of it, and he never missed
the funeral feasts for his clansmen—he would be asked to slaughter cattle,
to meet honored guests and help them dismount, to serve tea, and even to
chop wood and carry water. There are plenty of things to do at great funeral
feasts, attended by many people from all parts of the country. Momun did
everything he was asked quickly and easily; he never refused, like others.
The young women of the village, who had to receive and feed the horde of
guests, would say as they watched Momun at work:

"What would we have done without Obliging Momun?"

And so it would turn out that the old man, who had come all that
distance with his grandson, was placed in a role lit for a young fellow, a
mere helper. Anyone else would die of humiliation, but Momun never
minded at all.

And nobody wondered at the sight of old Momun serving the other
guests—that's what he had been all his life, Obliging Momun. It was his
own fault. And if any stranger asked how it was that he was running errands
for the women -were there no young fellows in the village?—Momun
would say:

"The dead man was my brother." (He considered all Bugans his
brothers. But weren't they equally "brothers" to the other guests?) "Who
else is to work at his funeral feast if not I? Aren't we all bound by kinship,
from the time of our ancestral Mother herself—the Horned Mother Deer?
And she, the miraculous Mother Deer, had bidden us to be friends in life
and in memory . . ."

That's what he was like, Obliging Momun!

Old and young addressed him with the familiar "thou." You could play
jokes on him—he was never offended; you did not have to take him into
account—he was a gentle, mild old man. No wonder it's said that people
don't forgive those who do not know how to compel respect. And he didn't
know how.

There were many things he did know. He knew carpentry and

saddlemaking. He knew how to stack hay; when he was younger, he would
build such haystacks that people would be sorry to break them up in winter:
rain slid off the stacks as off the back of a goose, and snow lay on them like
a sloping roof. During the war, as a member of the labor brigades, he
worked as a bricklayer in Magnitogorsk, building factories; he was
considered one of the best workmen. When he returned, he built wooden
houses in the forest district and looked after the forest. Although listed as a
helper, it was he who watched the forest, while Orozkul, his son-in-law,
spent most of his time visiting his cronies. Except when the authorities
came up—then Orozkul would be the master, showing them the forest,
arranging hunting parties for them. Momun also tended the livestock and
worked with the beehives. His whole life was spent in working and taking
care of this and that from morning until night, and yet he never learned how
to make people respect him.

But then, even Momun's appearance was not patriarchal, not like an
aksakal's [note: elder; also, a respectful form of address to an older man].
No slow dignity, no sternness. He was the soul of kindness, and this
unprofitable human quality was obvious at first glance. At all times, such
people are taught: "Don't be kind, be hard! Take this now, and this! Be
hard!" But, to his own misfortune, he remained incorrigibly kind. His face,
crisscrossed with wrinkles, was always smiling, and his eyes forever asked:
"What do you need? Is there anything you'd like me to do for you? I'll do it
in a moment, just tell me what it is . . ."

His nose, shaped like a duck's bill, was soft, as though altogether
without bone or gristle. And he was short of stature, a quick little old man,
like an adolescent.

Even his beard was nothing but a joke. Two or three reddish hairs on
his chin—that was all there was to it. He wasn't at all like some stately old
man you might see riding down the road, with a beard like a sheaf of grain,
in a great, loose overcoat with a wide lambskin collar and an expensive hat,
astride a fine horse, its saddle trimmed with silver. A sage, a prophet, no
one would hesitate to bow to such a man, he would be honored everywhere!
But old Momun had been born only as the Obliging Momun. Perhaps his
only advantage was that he never feared losing face with others. (Did I sit
down right? Did I say the right thing, or give the wrong answer, or smile the
wrong way, or this, or that?) In this respect, Momun, without suspecting it
himself, was extraordinarily fortunate. Many people waste away not so
much from disease as from their uncontrollable, devouring passion to show
themselves better and more important than they are. (Who doesn't want to
be known as clever, worthy, handsome, and at the same time stern, just, and
resolute?)

But old Momun was not like that. He was a funny, queer old man, and
everybody treated him as just a funny, queer old man.

There was only one thing that could seriously offend Momun—failure
to invite him to a family council regarding arrangements for a funeral feast.
On such occasions he was deeply distressed and hurt, and not because he
had been overlooked—he never decided anything at these councils anyway,
he was merely present—but because an ancient obligation had been
violated.

Momun had his own sorrows and afflictions, which made him suffer
and often cry at night. But outsiders knew nothing about it. Only those
closest to him knew.

When Momun saw his grandson near the truck, he sensed at once that
the boy was upset over something. But since the salesman was a guest, the
old man addressed him first. He quickly jumped down from the saddle and
held out both hands to the salesman.

"Assalam aleikum, great merchant!" he said, half seriously, half in jest.

"Has your caravan arrived safely, is your trade going well?" All of him
beaming, Momun shook the salesman's hand. "How much water has gone
by since we last met. Welcome to our parts!"

The salesman smiled tolerantly at his speech and his whole puny figure
in the same coarse, worn boots, the same canvas trousers made by the old
woman, the shabby jacket, the felt hat, grown rusty with sun and rain. And
he answered:

"The caravan is safe. But what does it look like, when the merchant
comes to you, and you run off into your fields and valleys? And tell your
wives to hold on to their kopeks as to their souls at dying time? A man
could show them the best goods in the world, and they won't open up their
purses."
 "Don't take offense, good man," Momun apologized in confusion. "If
we had known you were coming, we wouldn't have left. As for money, what
can you do if your pockets are empty? After we sell the potatoes in the fall .
. .”

"Go on," the salesman interrupted him. "I know you're as rich as beys.
You sit here in your mountains, with all the land, all the hay in the world.
Look at those woods—a man can't get across them in three days. You keep
livestock? You keep beehives? But when it comes to parting with a kopek,
you close your fists. Here, buy a silk quilt . . . Or a sewing machine, I've
only one left . . ."

"Truly, we haven't got that kind of money," Momun apologized.

"Tell it to someone else. You're tight, old man, sitting on your money.
And what for?"

"No, it's true, I swear by the Horned Mother Deer. . ."

“Here, take some corduroy, you can make yourself new pants."

"I would, I swear by the Horned Mother Deer . . ."

"Ah, what's the good of talking to you?" The salesman waved his
hand. "Drove all this way for nothing. And where is Orozkul?"

"Gone since morning. To Aksai, I think. Some business with the

shepherds . . ."

"Out visiting, eh?" the salesman said understandingly. There was an

awkward pause.

"Don't take offense, dear man," Momun spoke again. "In the autumn,
God willing, we'll sell the potatoes. . .”

"It's a long way to autumn."

"Well, no hard feelings. Come in, and have some tea."

 "That isn't what I came for," the salesman refused.

He began to close the truck doors, then suddenly he glanced at the

grandson who stood near the old man holding the dog by the ear, ready to
run after the truck.

"Why not buy him a schoolbag? The kid must be ready for school, no?
How old is he?"

Momun immediately seized on the idea. At least he'd buy something

from the pestering salesman. Besides, the boy really needed a schoolbag;
he'd be starting school next fall.

"You're right," said Momun. "I never thought of that. Certainly, he's
seven, going on eight. . . . Come over here," he called to his grandson.

The old man searched through his pockets and found the five ruble
note he had stashed away. It must have been lying in his pocket for a long
time—all soiled and crumpled.

"Here, roundhead." The salesman winked slyly at the boy, handing him
the schoolbag. "You'd better study, now. If you don't learn your ABCs,
you'll be stuck for life with grandpa in the mountains."

"He'll learn! He's a smart one," Momun replied, counting the change.
Then he glanced at his grandson who was awkwardly clutching the new
schoolbag, and pressed him close to himself. "That's good, now. In the fall
you'll go to school," he said in a low voice.

The hard, heavy palm of the grandfather gently covered the boy's head.
And the boy's throat contracted. He felt sharply the thinness of the old man
and the familiar smell of his clothes, a smell of dry hay and the sweat of a
hardworking man. True, dependable, his own. Perhaps the only person in
the world who doted on him—this simplehearted, funny old man whom idle
tongues had nicknamed Obliging Momun. . . . Well, what of it? Whatever
he was like, the boy was glad to have his own grandfather.
 The boy had never expected to feel such happiness. He had never
thought of school before. Until now, he had only seen other children who
went to school—out there, in the Issyk-Kul villages beyond the mountains,
where he had gone with his grandfather to the funeral feasts of important
old Bugans.

From that moment on, the boy never parted from his schoolbag.
Triumphant, he ran to show it off to everybody in the settlement. First he
took it to grandma—look what grandpa bought me! Then to Aunt Bekey.
She was glad to see it, and had some words of praise for the boy as well.

Aunt Bekey was seldom in a good mood. Most of the time, gloomy
and irritable, she paid no attention to her nephew. She couldn't be bothered
with him. She had her own troubles. Grandma always said that if she had
children of her own, she'd be a different woman. And Orozkul, her husband,
would be a different man. And then Grandfather Momun would also be a
different man, not as he was now. Although Momun had two daughters—
Aunt Bekey and her younger sister, the boy's mother—things were still bad.
It was had to have no children of your own, but even worse when your
children had no children. So grandma said. Try and understand her . . .

After Aunt Bekey, the boy ran over to show the new purchase to
Guldzhamal and her daughter. And from there, he hurried to the meadow, to
Seidakhmat. Again he dashed past the rusty "camel," and again he had no
time to stop and pat his hump; then past the "saddle," the "wolf," the "tank,"
and on along the riverbank. Up the path through the shrubbery. And then
along the mowed strip, until he came to Seidakhmat.

Seidakhmat was alone in the field. Grandpa had long finished mowing
his section, and Orozkul's as well. And the hay had already been removed.
Grandma and Aunt Bekey had raked it together, Momun had piled it on the
wagon, and he boy had helped grandpa, dragging the hay closer to the
wagon. They had piled two haystacks by the cowshed. Grandpa had built
them so neatly that no rain could penetrate smooth, silky stacks, as though
combed down with a fine comb. He did this every year. Orozkul never
mowed, he made his father-in-law do everything. He was the chief, after all.
If I want to, he would say, I can fire you in a minute. He'd say that to
grandpa and to Seidakhmat. When he was drunk. Rut he couldn't really fire
grandpa. Who'd do the work? How could he get along without grandpa?
There was a lot of work in the woods, especially in the fall. Grandpa always
said—the woods are not a flock of sheep, the trees won't wander off. But t
hey need as much looking after. In case of fire, or a sudden flood from the
mountains, a tree won't jump out of the way, won't leave its spot. It will
perish where it stands. That's why you need a forester, to see that the tree
doesn't perish. And as for Seidakhmat, Orozkul wouldn't fire him either,
because Seidakhmat was a quiet man. He never interfered, he never argued.
But though he was a quiet and strong fellow, he was lazy, and he liked to
sleep. That was why he had chosen forest work. Grandpa said that on the
Soviet farms such fellows drove trucks and plowed the land with tractors.
And Seidakhmat let even his own potato patch get overgrown with weeds.
Guldzhamal had to take care of the garden herself, with the baby in her
arms.

And now Seidakhmat kept putting off the mowing too. Even grandpa
had scolded him the other day. "Last winter," he said, "it wasn't you but the
beasts I was sorry for. That's why I gave you of my own hay. If you're
counting on the old man's hay again, you'd better tell me right now—I'll
mow it for you." That really shamed him, and today Seidakhmat had been
swinging away with his scythe since early morning.

Hearing quick footsteps behind him, Seidakhmat turned and wiped his
face with his sleeve.

"What is it? Does anybody want me?"

"No. But I have a schoolbag. Here. Grandpa bought it. I'll go to

school."

"Is that why you came running here?" Seidakhmat laughed. "Your
grandpa's a bit that way, you know"—he twirled his finger at his temple
—"and you're the same. Come on, now, let me see it." He clicked the lock,
turned the schoolbag this way and that, and gave it back to the boy,
mockingly shaking his head. "But wait a minute," he cried.

"What school will you go to? Where is it, that school of yours?''
 "What do you mean, what school? The Fermen school."

"You mean you'll walk to Dzhelesai?" Seidakhmat asked with wonder.

"Why, that's a good five miles across the mountain."

"Grandpa said he'll take me there, on horseback."

"Every day, both ways? The old man's daffy. It's time for him to go to
school himself. He'll sit there with you at the desk until the classes are over,
and then—back home!" Seidakhmat rolled with laughter. The idea of old
Momun sitting with his grandson at the school desk was too funny for
words.

The boy stood by, bewildered.

"Oh, I'm only joking," explained Seidakhmat.

He gave him a light fillip on the nose and pulled the visor of grandpa's
cap over the boy's eyes. Momun never wore the uniform cap of the Forestry
Department. He was too shy: "What am I, some sort of bigwig? I'll never
exchange my Kirghiz hat for any other." In summertime, Momun wore an
old white felt hat, of the kind that used to be called akkalpak in former
times, its brim edged with faded black satin, and in the winter an equally
ancient sheepskin hat. He let his grandson wear the green uniform cap of a
forester.

The boy was offended at Seidakhmat for making fun of his news. He
sullenly pushed the visor of his cap back over his forehead, and when
Seidakhmat tried to give him another fillip on the nose, he jerked his head
back and snapped at him:

"Leave me alone!"

"Oh, what a sorehead!" Seidakhmat smiled. "Don't mind me. The

schoolbag is first-class." And he patted the boy on the shoulder. "And now,
scram. I must still mow and mow . . ."

He spat on his hands and picked up the scythe.

 The boy ran home along the same path, and again past his stones. This
was no time to play with stones. A schoolbag was a serious thing.

The boy was fond of talking to himself. This time, however, he spoke
not to himself but to the schoolbag: "Don't believe him, my grandpa isn't
like that at all. It's only that he isn't sly, and that's why people make fun of
him. Because he's not the least bit sly. He'll take us to school. But you don't
even know where the school is. It's not so far, I'll show you. We'll look at it
through the binoculars from Outlook Mountain. I'll show you my white
ship, too. But first let's go into the barn—that's where I hide my binoculars.
I really should be watching the calf, but I always run off to look at the white
ship. Our calf's big now, you can't hold him when he pulls. But he's gotten
into the habit of suckling the cow. And the cow is his mother, she doesn't
grudge him the milk. You understand? Mothers never grudge their children
anything. That's what Guldzhamal says, she has her own little girl. . . .
They'll milk the cow soon, and we'll take the calf out to pasture. Then we'll
climb up Outlook Mountain and see the white ship. I talk like this with the
binoculars too, sometimes. Now we'll be three—you, me, and the
binoculars."

The boy spoke to his schoolbag as he was returning home. He enjoyed

talking to it. He intended to continue the conversation, to tell it more about
himself—things it didn't know yet. But he was interrupted. There was a
clatter of hooves from the side. A rider on a gray horse emerged from
behind the trees. It was Orozkul, who was also going home. The gray
stallion, Alabash, whom no one else was allowed to ride, was saddled with
the special holiday saddle, with copper stirrups and a leather strap across his
chest, with tinkling silver rings.

Orozkul's hat had slipped to the back of his head, exposing a red, low
forehead. The heat had made him sleepy, and lie dozed on his horse. His
velvet coat, poorly tailored but made to resemble those worn by the district
leaders, was unbuttoned from top to bottom. His white shirt had come out
from under his belt. He was full of food and quite drunk. Just a short while
ago he had been sitting with friends, drinking koumyss [note: fermented
mare’s milk] and gorging himself on meat.
 When shepherds and horseherds from the surrounding areas came to
the mountain pastures for the summer, they often invited Orozkul to visit
them. He had old friends among I hem, but they invited him for their own
reasons too. Orozkul was a useful man. Especially to those who were
building 'louses for themselves, but had to spend summers up in the
mountains. They could not leave the herds alone and go to look for building
materials. Besides, the materials weren't easy to come by, especially timber.
But if you pleased Orozkul, he'd let you have a couple of trees from the
forest preserve. Otherwise you might be wandering in the mountains with
your herd to the end of your days, and the house would never he finished.

Dozing in the saddle, heavy and self-important, Orozkul rode with the
toes of his fine cowhide boots resting carelessly in the stirrups. He nearly
tumbled off the horse when the boy suddenly came running toward him,
swinging his schoolbag.

"Uncle Orozkul, look what I have! Look at my school-bag! I'll go to

school!"

"Oh, the devil take you," Orozkul swore, startled, and pulled at the
reins. He glanced at the boy with sleepy, reddened, drunken eyes. "What's
the matter, where'd you come from?"

"I'm going home. I have a schoolbag. I went to show it to

Seidakhmat," the boy said in a small voice.

"All right, go on and play," Orozkul growled and, swaying uncertainly

in the saddle, he went on. What did he care about that stupid schoolbag,
about that brat abandoned by his parents, when he himself was so wronged
by life, when God didn't see fit to grant him a son of his own, his own flesh
and blood, while others were blessed with all the children they could want.

Orozkul sniffled and gave a sob. Pity and anger choked him. Pity for
himself, regret that his life would pass without leaving a trace, and
mounting anger at his barren wife. It was all because of her, damn her,
going about empty bellied all these years.
 "I'll show you!" Orozkul threatened her mentally, clenching his beefy
fists, and moaned under his breath to keep himself from weeping out loud.
He knew he would go home and beat her again. Every time he drank, this
bull-like man went wild with grief and anger.

The boy walked after him along the path and was astonished to see his
uncle vanish suddenly. Orozkul had turned off toward the river, dismounted,
threw down the reins, and went on foot straight through the tall grass. He
walked, swaying and stooped, pressing his hands over his face, his head
pulled into his shoulders. At the bank, he squatted down, dipped his hands
into the water and splashed it on his face.

"I guess he's got a headache from the heat," the boy decided when he
saw what Orozkul was doing. He did not know that Orozkul was crying and
could not stop. That he was crying because it was not his son who came
running to meet him, and because he had not found within himself the tiling
that was needed to say at least a human word or two to this boy with his
schoolbag.
 2
From the summit of Outlook Mountain you could see in all directions.
Lying on his stomach, the boy adjusted the binoculars. These powerful field
glasses had once been awarded to his grandfather for his long years of
service at the forest post. The old man had no patience with them: "My own
eyes are just as good." But they became the boy's favorite companion.

This time he had come to the mountain with the binoculars and the
schoolbag.

At first, all objects jumped distortedly in the round lenses, then

suddenly they became firm and sharp. This was the most interesting
moment of all. Holding his breath so as not to disturb the focus, he admired
the landscape opening before him as though he had created it himself. Then
he would shift to another spot, and again everything became displaced, and
the boy again turned the adjustment screw to capture the lost focus.

He could see everything from here. All the way out were the highest,
snowcapped summits, above Ivhich there was nothing but the sky. They
loomed beyond the other mountains, rising above their peaks and the whole
earth. Then ca me the mountain ranges just beneath the snowy caps—
forested, with dark pinewoods above and leafy trees below. Beneath these
were the Kungey Mountains, facing the sun, on which nothing grew but
grass. And on the opposite side, where the lake was, there were still lower
ones, with barren, rocky slopes descending to the valley that bordered on
the lake. On that side he could also see fields, meadows, orchards, villages.
. . . The green fields were already touched with streaks of yellow: harvest
time was near. Like mice, little cars and trucks were scuttling up and down
the roads, followed by winding trails of dust. And at the very edge of the
land, as far as the eye could see, beyond the sandy line of shore, was the
dense blue curve of the lake. It was Issyk-Kul. There, the water met the sky,
with nothing beyond them. The lake lay shining, deserted, and motionless,
save for the faint stirring of white foam along the bank.
 The boy looked that way for a long time.

"The white ship has not come yet," he said to the schoolbag. "Let's
take another look at our school."

The neighboring valley, on the other side of Outlook Mountain, was

clearly visible from here. Through the binoculars, the boy could even see
the thread in the hands of an old woman who sat spinning near the window,
outside her house.

The Dzhelesai valley was treeless, except for a few remaining solitary
old pines. Once there were woods there. Now there were rows of slate-
roofed barns, and large dark piles of straw and manure. The pedigreed
calves from the dairy farm were kept there. And a short distance from the
barns there was a small double row of houses—the cattle breeders' village.
The little street climbed down a sloping mound. At the very end of it stood
a small building. It was the four-year primary school. The older children
were sent to the boarding school at the Soviet farm; the younger ones
attended this school.

The boy had visited the village with his grandfather to see the medic
when he had a sore throat. Now he looked intently through his binoculars at
the little school covered with a reddish tile roof, with a single, crooked
chimney and a handmade plywood sign: MEKTEP. He did not know how to
read, but he guessed that this was the word. Everything, even the slightest,
unbelievably small details, could be seen through the field glass. Some
words scraped out on the plaster wall, the broken, pasted glass in the
window frame, the warped, rough boards of the porch. He imagined himself
going there with his schoolbag and stepping into the door on which a large
padlock was now hanging. What would he find behind that door?

When he finished examining the school, the boy turned his binoculars
to the lake. But everything was still the same. The white ship had not yet
appeared. The boy turned his back to the lake and looked down, putting his
binoculars aside. Below, right at the foot of the mountain, the seething,
silvery river rushed over rocks and rapids along the bottom of the valley.
The winding road followed the riverbank and disappeared together with the
river behind a turn in the gorge. The opposite bank was steep and wooded—
the beginning of the forest sanctuary that climbed high into the mountains,
to the very snowcaps. The pines climbed farther than the rest. They raised
their dark little brushes along the crests of the mountain ranges, amidst the
rocks and snow.

The boy looked mockingly at the houses, barns, and sheds in the yard
of the forest station. They seemed small and fragile from above. Beyond the
station he could distinguish his familiar rocks, the camel, the wolf, the
saddle, the tank. He had first seen them from here, through his binoculars,
and it was then that he had named them.

With a mischievous grin, the boy stood up and threw a stone in the
direction of the yard. The stone fell some distance below, on the mountain.
The boy sat down and began to study the settlement through his binoculars.
First through the larger lenses. The houses ran farther and farther away and
turned into toy boxes. The boulders turned into pebbles. And the pond that
grandfather had built for him in the river shallows seemed altogether funny
—just big enough for a sparrow bath. The boy laughed and shook his head.
He quickly turned the binoculars and adjusted the focus. His beloved
boulders, enlarged to gigantic size, seemed to press their foreheads right
into the lenses. The camel, the wolf, the saddle, and the tank were
overwhelming—full of ridges, cracks, and spots of rusty lichen on their
sides. And, most important of all, they really had a striking resemblance to
what the boy had named them.

Beyond the boulders, on the shallow bank, was grandpa's pond.

Through the binoculars, the spot was clearly visible. The water ran up
briefly from the rapid stream upon the wide pebbled shoals, spread out, and
rolled back, seething, into the rushing current. In the shallows, the water
reached up to the knees, but the undertow was so strong that it could carry
off a boy like him. To keep from being carried off, he would hold on to the
willow growing by the riverside, some of its branches on the ground, others
splashing in the water. But he could only dip in for a moment, and what
kind of bathing was that? Like a horse tied to a stake. And then, all the
scolding, all the anger at home. Grandma would nag his grandfather: "He'll
be carried off into the river, then let him blame himself—I will not stir a
finger. Who needs him, anyway? His own mother and father left him. And I
have troubles enough without him, I've got no strength left."

What could one say to her? She was an old woman, and what she said
was right. But then, Momun felt sorry for the boy, too. The river was almost
at the door and no matter how much the old woman scolded and threatened,
the boy still ran into the water. And so Momun decided to dam up the
shallows with rocks, so the boy would have a pond to play in without
danger.

Who knows how many rocks old Momun dragged to the shallows,
choosing large ones that the current could not dislodge. He carried them
pressed against his stomach, and, standing in the water, built them up
cunningly, so that the water could flow in freely between them and flow out
just as freely. Funny-looking, thin, with his sparse little beard, in wet
trousers clinging to his body, he labored all day long over the dam. And in
the evening he lay stretched out on his back, coughing, unable to bend or
straighten out. And grandma lashed out at him:

"A young fool, well, he's young. But what can a body say about an old
fool? What the devil did you have to knock yourself out for? You keep him,
you feed him—what else do you want? Catering to every damn foolishness.
Mark my word, no good will come of it. . .”

Anyway, the pond turned out very well. Now the boy could swim
without fear. And always with open eyes. Because fish swim in the water
with open eyes. He had a strange longing—to turn into a fish. And to swim
far away.

As he was looking at the pond through his binoculars, the boy

imagined himself there. He saw himself throwing off his shirt and pants and
stepping in, shrinking a little because the water in mountain streams is
always cold—it takes your breath away, then you get used to it. Now,
holding on to a willow branch, he plunged into the current face down. The
water closed with a splash over his head and flowed, fiery cold, under his
belly, over his back and legs. Under the water all outside sounds vanish—
you hear only the rushing of the stream. Keeping his eyes wide open, he
stared hard to see everything that could be seen. His eyes prickled and hurt,
but he smiled proudly to himself and even stuck his tongue out. That was
for grandma. Let her know. He wouldn't drown. And he wasn't afraid of
anything. He let go of the branch and the water swept him off until his feet
were up against the stones of the dam. And then his breath gave out. He
jumped out of the water, climbed into the bank and ran back to the willow.
And down again and again, many times more. He was ready to swim in
grandpa's pond a hundred times a day. Until he finally turned into a fish.
And he had to, he had to become a fish.

The boy sighed. After examining the riverbank, he turned the

binoculars to his yard. The hens, the turkeys with their chicks, the ax
leaning against a stump, the steaming samovar, and all the other objects in
the yard became so incredibly huge, they came so close that the boy
involuntarily stretched out his hand to touch them. Then, to his horror, he
saw the red calf, enlarged to elephant size, placidly chewing at the wash
hung on the line. The calf closed his eyes with pleasure, saliva trickled
down his lips—he was so happy chewing a whole mouthful of grandma's
dress.

"Oh, you stupid!" The boy jumped up with his binoculars and waved
his hand. "Get away, do you hear, get away! Baltek! Baltek!" The dog lay
calmly by the house. "Get him! Get him!" the boy cried desperately to the
dog. But Baltek didn't even prick up his ears. He lay stretched out in the
shadow without a care in the world.

At that moment grandma came out of the house. She clapped her
hands, seized a broom, and rushed at the calf. The calf ran, grandma
followed. His eyes glued to the binoculars, the boy squatted down to keep
from being seen on the mountain. Having driven off the calf, the old woman
walked back toward the house, swearing, breathless with anger and with
running. The boy saw her as clearly as if he were right next to her. She was
as close in his glass as in the movies, when they show only a person's face.
He saw her yellow eyes, narrowed with rage. He saw the flush that covered
her whole wrinkled face. As in the movies, when the sound suddenly breaks
off, grandma's lips moved rapidly and soundlessly, baring her jagged teeth
with gaps between them. It was impossible to hear her words at this
distance, but the boy heard them as clearly and distinctly as if she were
shouting them right over his ear. How she swore at him! He knew it by
heart: "Just wait. Wait till you come back. I'll show you! And I won't give a
damn for grandpa. How many times I've told him to throw out that stupid
looking-gadget. Again he's run off to the mountain. A plague on that devil's
ship, may it burn up, may it drown . . ."

The boy on the mountain sighed heavily. Wouldn't it happen just today
that he would let the calf out of his sight? Just on the day when he had got
his schoolbag, when he was already dreaming of how he'd go to school?

The old woman went on and on. Continuing her scolding, she
examined her chewed-up dress. Guldzhamal came out with her daughter to
see what was amiss. Complaining to her, grandma got even more upset. She
shook her fists in the direction of the mountain. Her bony, dark fist waved
threateningly in front of the binoculars. "Found himself a game. A plague
on that damned ship. May it go up in flames, may it go down to the bottom .
. ."

The samovar was boiling in the yard. He could see through the
binoculars the puffs of steam breaking out from under the lid. Aunt Bekey
came out for the samovar. And the whole thing started all over. Grandma
stuck her chewed-up dress under Bekey's nose. "Here, look at your
nephew's doing!"

Aunt Bekey began to quiet her down, to defend him. The boy guessed
what she was saying—probably the same things she had said before: "Calm
down, mother. He's still young, he doesn't know. What can you ask of him?
He's alone here, without friends. Why shout, why frighten the child?" To
which grandma undoubtedly answered: "Don't you teach me. Try and bear
some children yourself, then you'll know what you can ask of children.
What's he hanging out on that mountain for? He's got no time to tie up the
calf? What's he looking for? His no-good parents? The two who brought
him into the world and then ran off in different directions? It's easy for you,
a barren one . . ."

Even at this distance, the boy saw in his binoculars how Aunt Bekey's
gaunt cheeks turned deathly gray, how all of her began to shake. He knew
exactly what Aunt Bekey would shout back—she'd throw the words into her
stepmother's face: "And what about you, old witch, how many sons and
daughters did you bring up? What are you, I'd like to know!"

And then all bell broke loose. Grandma howled with anger.
Guldzhamal tried to make peace between the women, she talked to the old
woman, put her arm about her, trying to take her home, but grandma ranted
on and on, rushing about the yard like a madwoman. Aunt Bekey snatched
up the samovar, spilling the boiling water, and almost ran with it into her
house. And grandma wearily sank onto a log and sobbed, complaining of
her bitter fate. The boy was now forgotten. Now she raved against the Lord
God himself and the whole world. "Is it me you're talking about? Is it me
you're asking what I am?" grandma cried indignantly to her absent
stepdaughter. "Why, if the Lord hadn't punished me, if He hadn't taken my
five babies, if my only remaining son hadn't been struck down by a bullet in
the war at the age of eighteen, if my old man, my darling Taygara, had not
frozen to death during a snowstorm with his flock of sheep, would I ever be
here among you forest people? Am I, then, like you, a barren one? Would I
be living in my old age with your father, the half-witted Momun? For what
sins, for what transgressions have you punished me, you damned, accursed
God?"

The boy took the binoculars away from his eyes and his head drooped
sadly. "How can we go home now?" he said quietly to the schoolbag. "It's
all because of me, and because of that stupid calf. And because of you, too."
He turned to the binoculars. "You're always calling me to look at the white
ship. It's your fault, too."

He looked around him at the mountains, cliffs, rocks, and forests.

Glistening streams fell silently from the glaciers in the heights. It was only
here, below, that the water seemed at last to acquire a voice, to rush with
constant, unceasing noise down the river. And the mountains were
enormous and endless. The boy felt at that moment very small, and very
lonely. Alone among the huge mountains rising on all sides.

The sun was already sinking toward sunset beyond the lake. It was
growing cooler. The first, short shadows appeared on the eastern slopes.
Now the sun would sink lower and lower, and the shadows would creep
downward, to the foothills. The white ship usually appeared on Issyk-Kul
Lake at this time of day.

The boy turned the binoculars to the farthest visible spot and held his
breath. There it was! And everything was instantly forgotten. There, on the
blue, blue edge of Issyk-Kul was the white ship. It had come. There it was!
Long, powerful, splendid, with its row of tall smokestacks. It sailed in a
straight line, steady and even. The boy quickly polished the lenses with the
edge of his shirt and adjusted the focus again. The outlines of the ship
became even sharper. Now he could see it rocking slightly on the waves,
leaving a white, foaming wake behind it. His eyes glued to the glass, the
boy stared with excited admiration at the white ship. If he could have his
way, he would ask the ship to come nearer, to let him see the people on it.
But the white ship didn't know his wish. It went slowly and majestically on
its own way, who knows whence and who knows where.

For a long time the boy could see the passage of the ship, and thought
again how he would turn into a fish and swim down the river, all the way to
the white ship.

When he had first caught sight of the white ship from Outlook
Mountain, his heart began to hammer wildly with all that beauty, and he
instantly decided that his father—an Issyk-Kul sailor—sailed on that very
ship. And he believed it because he was so anxious for it to be true.

He did not remember either his father or his mother. He never saw
them. Neither had ever come to visit him. But the boy knew that his father
was a sailor on Issyk-Kul, and his mother left her son with grandpa after the
marriage broke up, and went to the city. She went, and disappeared—in a
distant city beyond the mountains, the lake, and more mountains.

Old Momun had once gone to that city to sell potatoes. He was away a
whole week and, on returning, he told Aunt Bekey and grandma over a cup
of tea that he had seen his daughter, the boy's mother. She was working in
some big factory as a weaver, and she had a new family—two girls whom
she sent to nursery school and saw only once a week. She lived in a big
house, but in a tiny room, so tiny you could not turn around. And in the
yard nobody knew anybody else, as in a marketplace. And everybody out
there lived like that: they would come into their room and lock the door at
once. Sitting locked up as in a prison all the time. Her husband, she said,
was a bus driver, ferrying people through the streets from four in the
morning till late at night. A difficult job. His daughter, he said, kept crying
and begging his forgiveness. They were on a waiting list for a new
apartment, but nobody knew when they would get it. When they did, she'd
take the boy to live with them, if her husband permitted. And she asked the
old man to wait awhile. Grandpa Momun told her not to worry. The main
thing was to live in peace and harmony with her husband, and the rest
would take care of itself. As for the boy, she shouldn't cry. "As long as I'm
alive, I won't let anybody take him. And if I die, God-will find a way for
him—a living man will always find what's destined for him." Aunt Bekey
and grandma listened to the old man, sighing, and even shedding a tear or
two.

It was also then, over their tea, that they mentioned his father. Grandpa
had heard that his former son-in-law was still working as a sailor on some
ship and that he, too, had a new family, with two or maybe three children.
They lived near the harbor. People said he had quit drinking. And his new
wife came with the children to the pier each time to meet him. "That
means," the boy thought, "they come to meet this ship . .

And meantime the ship sailed on, departing slowly. White and long, it
slid over the smooth blue of the lake, puffing smoke from its smokestacks
and never suspecting that the boy, who had turned into a boy-fish, was
swimming toward it.

He dreamed of becoming a fish, so that everything about him would be

fishlike—body, tail, fins, and scales—everything except his head, which
would remain his own: large, round, with lop ears and a scratched nose.
And his eyes would be the same as now. Naturally, not quite the same, for
they would have to look like fish eyes.

The boy's lashes were long, like the calf's, and they kept blinking of
their own will. Guldzhamal said she hoped her daughter would have such
lashes, she'd grow up to be a beauty! But why does one have to be a beauty?
Or handsome? Who needs it! For his part, he had no use for beautiful eyes;
he needed eyes that could see under the water.
 The transformation was to take place in grandpa's pond. One, two, and
he was a fish. Then he would leap at once from the pond into the river,
straight into the seething current, and swim downstream. And go on and on,
leaping out from time to time to look around. It would not be interesting to
swim underwater all the time. He would speed along the rushing torrent
past the red clay precipice, across the rapids, through the foaming waves,
past woods and mountains. He would say good-bye to his favorite boulders:
"Good-bye, resting camel," "good-bye, wolf," "good-bye, saddle," "good-
bye, tank." And when he swam past the forest station, he would jump out of
the water and wave his fins to grandpa: "Good-bye, eta, I'll be back soon."
And grandpa would be petrified with wonder at such a sight and wouldn't
know what to do. And grandma, and Aunt Bekey, and Guldzhamal with her
daughter would all stand gaping with open mouths. Who has ever seen a
creature with a human head and the body of a fish! And he'd be waving his
fin to them: "Good-bye, I'm off to Issyk-Kul, to the white ship. My father is
a sailor on it." Baltek would run to follow him along the bank. But if he
decided to plunge into the water to join him, he'd cry: "No, Baltek, don't,
you'll drown!" And he would continue on; he'd dive under the cables of the
suspension bridge, and past the coastal shrubs, and down through the
roaring gorge straight into Issyk-Kul.

Issyk-Kul is as big as a sea. He would swim across the waves, from

wave to wave to wave—and then the white ship would appear before him.
"Hello, white ship," he'd say to it, "it's I! I'm the one who always watched
you through my binoculars." The people on the ship would come running
and stare in wonder. And then he'd say to his father, the sailor: "Hello, papa,
I am your son. I've come to you." "What kind of a son are you—half-man,
half-fish?" "Just take me up on board, and I'll become your ordinary son."
"Isn't that something! Well, let me try." And his father would cast a net and
catch him, and pull him up on deck. And he would turn back into himself.
And then, and then . . .

Then the white ship would sail on. The boy would tell his father all he
knew, all about his life. About the mountains where he lived, about his
stones, about the river and the forest preserve, about grandpa's pond where
he had learned to swim like a fish, with open eyes . . .
 He'd tell him what it was like, living with Grandpa Momun. His father
mustn't think that, just because a man is nicknamed Obliging Momun, it
means that he's a bad man. There is no other grandpa like him anywhere, he
is the best grandpa in the world. But he isn't sly, and that's why everybody
laughs at him. Because he isn't sly at all. And Uncle Orozkul shouts at him,
at the old man! Sometimes before strangers, too. And grandpa, instead of
standing up for himself, forgives him, and even does his work in the woods
and around the house. But that's not all! When Uncle Orozkul comes home
drunk, instead of spitting into his shameless eyes, grandpa runs up to him,
helps him down from the horse, takes him home, and puts him to bed. He
even covers him with the coat so he won't get chilled or get a headache, and
then he unsaddles the horse and cleans and feeds him. And all because Aunt
Bekey is childless. Why is it like this, papa? Wouldn't it be better if people
had children if they wanted to, and didn't if they didn't want to? It's a pity to
watch grandpa when Uncle Orozkul starts beating Aunt Bekey. It might be
easier if he hit grandpa instead. He cannot bear to hear her screams. But
what can he do? If he wants to rush out to help his daughter, grandma
doesn't let him: "Keep out of it," she says. "They'll settle it themselves. Why
should you butt in? She's not your wife. Sit still." "But she's my daughter!"
And grandma: "And what if you were living somewhere far away instead of
next door? You'd gallop here on horseback every time to separate them?
And who'd keep your daughter as a wife after that?"

The grandma I'm talking about isn't the one that used to be. You
probably don't even know her, papa. This is another grandma. My own
grandma died when I was little, then this one came. We often have queer
weather—you can't make it out: one moment it's bright, then it gets cloudy,
one moment it rains, the next it hails. This grandma is just like that, you
never understand her. Now she's good, now angry, and now nothing at all.
When she is sore, she'll nag you to death. Grandpa and I keep silent. She's
always saying that a stranger, no matter how much you feed him and care
for him, will bring you no good. But I'm not a stranger here, papa. I've
always lived with grandpa. She's the stranger, she came afterward. And then
began to call me a stranger.

You know, papa, in wintertime the snow gets so high, it's up to m3r
neck. If you want to go into the woods, you can get there only on the gray
horse, Alabash. He pushes through the snowdrifts with his chest. And the
winds! You can't stay on your feet. When the waves rise on the lake, when
your ship begins to roll from side to side, it is our San-Tash wind that rocks
the lake. Grandpa told me that a long, long time ago enemy armies were
coming to take this land. Then such a wind blew from our San-Tash
Mountains that the warriors could not stay in the saddle. They climbed
down from their horses, but they could not walk, either. The wind slashed at
their faces till they bled. And when they turned from the wind, it drove and
drove them from the back so that they could not even glance around, until it
drove them all from Issyk-Kul. That's what happened. But we live in this
wind. It starts from our place. All winter long the forest across the river
creaks and hums and moans in the wind. Sometimes I'm frightened to hear
it.

In wintertime there isn't much work in the woods. There are no people
around at all—it isn't like the summer, when the herds come. I love it when
people stop for the night in the big meadow in summertime, with their
flocks of sheep or droves of horses. In the morning they go on into the
mountains, but it's good when they come all the same. Their children and
women come in trucks. The yurts and things are also carried by truck.
When they settle down a bit, grandpa and I go out to greet them. He shakes
every man's hand. I do too. Grandpa says younger people must always offer
their hand to older ones. If you don't offer your hand, it means you have no
respect for them. Grandpa also says that out of every seven men one might
be a prophet. A prophet is a very good and clever man. And he who shakes
his hand will be lucky all his life. But I say—if that is so, then why doesn't
this prophet say that he's a prophet, and then everybody would shake his
hand. Grandpa laughs: that's just the point, he says —the prophet doesn't
know himself that he's a prophet; he is a simple man. Only a robber knows
that he is a robber. I don't really understand this, but I always shake people's
hands, although sometimes I feel very shy.

But when grandpa and I go to the meadow, I don't feel shy.

"Welcome to the summer pastures of our fathers and grandfathers! Is

all well with the cattle and the folk? Are the children well?" That's what
grandpa says. I only shake hands. Everybody knows grandpa, and he knows
everybody. He has his own conversations with the visitors. He asks them
questions, and he tells them about our lives. And I don't know what to talk
about with the children. But then we start playing hide and seek, or war, and
I get so excited I don't want to leave. If only it were summer all the time,
then I could always play with the children in the meadow!

While we are playing, the men light fires. Do you think, papa, that the
fires light up the whole meadow? They don't. The light is only near the fire,
but outside the circle it gets darker than before. And we play war, we hide
and attack in the dark, and it's like being in a movie. If you are the
commander, everybody obeys you. It's probably nice for a commander to be
a commander.

Then the moon comes up over the mountains. It's even more fun to
play in the moonlight, but grandpa takes me home. We walk across the
meadow, through shrubbery. The sheep lie quietly. The horses are grazing
all around. We walk and hear someone start a song—a young shepherd, or
maybe an old one. Grandpa stops me: "Listen. You won't often hear such
songs." We stand, listening. Grandpa sighs and nods to the song.

Grandpa says that in olden times a khan was captured in battle by

another khan. And this other khan said to his captive: "If you wish, you can
live with me as my slave. If not, I will fulfill your most cherished desire,
and then I'll kill you." The other thought a moment, and said: "I will not live
as a slave. Better kill me. But first call here a shepherd from my land, the
first you meet." "What do you want him for?" "I want to hear him sing
before I die." Grandpa says people would give their lives for a song of their
homeland. I'd like to see such people. Do they live in big cities?

But the songs are good to hear. Grandpa says they are ancient songs.
"What people they were!" he whispers. "God, what songs they sang . . ." I
don't know why, but I get to feel so sorry for grandpa, I love him so much
that I want to cry.

In the morning there is already no one in the meadow. The sheep and
horses are driven farther up into the mountains for the whole summer. Other
herds come after them, from other collective farms. In the daytime they
don't stop, they just pass through. But in the evening they stop for the night
in the meadow. And then grandpa and I go out to greet them. He likes
greeting people, and I learned it from him. Maybe one day I will shake a
real prophet's hand in the meadow.

And in the winter Uncle Orozkul and Aunt Bekey go to the city, to the
doctor. Some people say the doctor can help, he can give medicines to help
a child get born. But grandma always says the best thing is to go to a holy
place, way out across the mountains, where cotton grows in the fields. The
land is flat there, so flat you'd think there couldn't be any mountains, but
there is one—a holy one—Suleiman's Mountain. And if you slaughter a
black sheep at its foot and pray to God, then climb the mountain and bow at
every step and pray and beg God properly, he may take pity and give you a
child. Aunt Bekey wants to go there, to Suleiman's Mountain, but Uncle
Orozkul is against it. It's too far. It's too expensive, he says. You can get
there only by plane. And then, it is a long way till you get to the plane, and
it costs lots of money too . . .

When they go to the city, we remain at the post just by ourselves. We

and our neighbors, Uncle Seidakhmat, his wife Guldzhamal, and their little
daughter. That's all.

In the evening, when all the chores are done, grandpa tells me tales.
The night behind our house is black, black and bitter cold. The wind is
raging. Even the highest mountains are frightened on such nights. They
huddle closer to our house, to the light in our windows. And somehow, this
makes me both afraid and glad. If I were a giant, I'd put on a giant overcoat
and come out of the house. I'd tell the mountains loudly: "Don't be
frightened, mountains! I am here. The wind, the darkness, the blizzard don't
matter. I am not afraid of anything, don't you be afraid either. Stay where
you are, don't huddle close together." Then I would walk over the
snowdrifts, step across the river, and go into the woods. The trees are also
frightened in the woods at night. They're alone, with nobody to say a word
to them. They stand there naked, freezing in the cold, with no place to hide.
And I would walk in the woods, and pat every tree on the trunk, so it
wouldn't be afraid. I think, the trees that don't turn green in spring are those
that froze from fright. We chop them down afterward for firewood.
 I think about all this while grandpa tells me his tales. He talks for a
long time. There are all sorts of tales. Some are funny, especially the one
about the boy as big as a thumb who was called Chypalak and who was
swallowed by a greedy wolf to his own misfortune. No, he was first eaten
by a camel. Chypalak fell asleep under a leaf, and the camel was walking
by and swallowed him with the leaf. That's why people say that a camel
never knows what it eats. Chypalakbegan to cry and call for help. And so
his old parents had to kill the camel to save their Chypalak. And the story
with the wolf is even more interesting. He also swallowed Chypalak,
because he was stupid. And then he cried bitter tears. The wolf met
Chypalak and laughed: "What kind of tiny midge is that under my feet? I'll
give one lick, and you'll be gone." But Chypalak said to him: "Don't touch
me, wolf, or I'll turn you into a dog." And the wolf laughed again, "Ha, ha,
who ever saw a wolf turn into a dog? Now I will eat you just because you
are so rude." And he swallowed Chypalak. He swallowed him and forgot all
about it. But from that day on he couldn't live a wolf's life anymore. As
soon as the wolf would creep up to the sheep, Chypalak would shout in his
belly: "Hey, shepherds, wake up! It's I, the gray wolf, creeping up to steal a
sheep!" The wolf didn't know what to do. He bit his sides, he rolled on the
ground. But Chypalak wouldn't stop. "Hey, shepherds, come quick, give me
a good thrashing!" The shepherds would run after the wolf with cudgels, the
wolf would run away. And the shepherds followed, wondering: the wolf
must have gone crazy—he runs away, and yells, "Catch up with me,
brothers, thrash me, don't spare my hide!" The shepherds rolled with
laughter, and the wolf would get away. But it didn't do him any good.
Wherever he turned, Chypalak would get in his way. Everywhere people
chased him and laughed at him. The wolf grew thin with hunger, nothing
but skin and bones. He'd click his teeth and whine: "What is this trouble
that has fallen on my poor head? Why do I keep calling misfortune on
myself? Have I gone daffy with old age and lost my wits?" And Chypalak
whispers in his ear: "Run to Tashmat, he has fat sheep! Run to Baimat, his
dogs are deaf. Run to Ermat, his shepherds are asleep." And the wolf sits
and whimpers: "I won't run anywhere, I'll go and hire myself out
somewhere as a dog . . ."

Isn't that a funny story, papa? Grandpa has other stories, too, some sad,
some frightening. But my favorite one is about the Horned Mother Deer.
Grandpa says that everyone who lives near Issyk-Kul should know it. Not
to know it is a sin. Do you know it, papa? Grandpa says it is true, that it
really happened a long time ago. He says we are all children of the Horned
Mother Deer. You and me and everybody else.

So that's how we live in wintertime. And the winter lasts and lasts. If it
weren't for grandpa's tales, I'd get terribly bored.

But spring is fine. When it gets really warm, the shepherds come into
the mountains again. And then we're not alone. Only across the river there
is nobody else, we are the last. Across the river there is only the forest, and
everything that lives in it. That's why we live at the post, to make sure that
no one sets a foot inside the forest, that no one breaks a single branch. One
day learned people came to visit us. Two women, both wearing pants, a
little old man, and a young fellow. The young one was a student. They spent
a whole month with us. Collecting leaves and branches. They said there
were few forests left in the world like our San-Tash, almost none at all. And
every tree should be guarded and watched over.

And I used to think that grandpa just felt sorry for every tree. He gets
very upset when Uncle Orozkul lets his friends cut down pines for logs.
 3
The white ship was receding. It was no longer possible to make out its
smokestacks even through the binoculars. Soon it would disappear from
sight. The boy now had to invent the end of his journey on his father's ship.
But he could not find the right ending. He could easily imagine himself
turning into a fish, swimming down the river to the lake, meeting the white
ship and his father. And everything he'd tell his father. But what came after
that? He could not work it out. Suppose the shore was already in sight. The
ship moved toward the harbor. The sailors prepared to disembark. His father
also had to go home. His wife and two children were waiting for him at the
dock. But what was he to do? Go with his father? Would he take him along?
And if he did, and his wife asked: "Who is this? Where's he from? What do
we need him for?" No, it was best not to go . . .

And the white ship moved farther and farther, turning into a scarcely
visible dot. The sun was already at the edge of the water. He could see
through the binoculars the dazzling, fiery purple surface of the lake.

The ship was gone. It vanished. And the tale of the white ship was
over. It was time to go home.

The boy picked up the schoolbag from the ground, pressed the
binoculars under his arm, and quickly ran down the mountain, slithering
down the slope like a little snake. And the nearer he came to his home, the
uneasier his spirit. He would have to answer for the dress that had been
chewed up by the calf. Now he could think of nothing but the coming
punishment. To keep up his courage, he said to the schoolbag: "Don't be
frightened. So they'll give us a scolding. I didn't do it on purpose. I simply
didn't know the calf ran off. So they'll cuff me on the ears. I can stand it.
And you, if they throw you down on the floor, don't worry. You won't
break, you're a schoolbag. Now, if grandma gets her hands on the
binoculars, that's a different story. We'll hide them in the barn first, then
we'll go home . . ."
 And this was what he did. Yet it was frightening to enter the house.

A warning silence came from within. And the yard was as quiet and
empty as if all the people had gone away. It turned out that Aunt Bekey had
gotten another beating from her husband. And Grandpa Momun had tried
again to curb his crazed, drunk son-in-law. Again the old man had to beg
and plead, to hang on Orozkul's huge paws, and witness all that shame—the
sight of his bruised, disheveled, screaming daughter. And hear his daughter
abused in the vilest language in the presence of her own father. Hear her
called a barren bitch, a thrice-damned she-ass, and many other words. And
listen to his daughter wailing over her fate in the wild voice of a
madwoman: "Is it my fault that heaven deprived me of conception? How
many women in the world keep bearing young like sheep, and I'm accursed
by God. What for? Why must I suffer such a life? It will be better if you kill
me, you beast! There—hit me, hit me! . . ."

Old Momun sat brokenly in the corner, still breathing hard. His eyes
were closed, and his hands, folded on his knees, were trembling. He was
very pale.

Momun glanced at his grandson without saying anything, and his eyes
closed wearily again. Grandma was not home. She had gone to make peace
between Aunt Bekey and her husband, to clean up the house, pick up the
broken dishes. That's what she was like, grandma: when Orozkul was
beating his wife, she didn't interfere and kept grandpa back. But after the
fight she'd go and try to talk some sense into them, quiet them down. Well,
that was something too.

More than anyone else, the boy pitied the old man. On such days he
seemed close to death. Benumbed, Momun sat in the corner, never showing
his face to anyone. He never told anybody, not a soul, what he was thinking.
And he was thinking at these moments that he was old, that he had had a
single son, and even he had died in the war. And no one knew him any
longer, no one remembered him. If his son had lived, who knows, life might
have turned out differently. Momun was also mourning for his dead wife,
with whom he had spent a lifetime. But the worst thing of all was that his
daughters had found no happiness. The younger, leaving his grandson with
him, was now struggling out there with a big family in one room. The older
was suffering here with Orozkul. And though he, her old father, was nearby
and willing to endure any hardship for her sate, what good was that? The
blessing of motherhood was kept and kept from her. It was many years now
that she had been with Orozkul, and she was sick to death of living with
him, but where was she to go? And what would happen later? Who knows,
he might die any day, he was an old man. What would she do then, his
unfortunate daughter?

The boy hastily drank some milk from a cup, ate a piece of pancake,
and huddled quietly by the window. He did not light the lamp, afraid to
disturb his grandfather. Let him sit and think.

The boy was also thinking his own thoughts. He could not understand
why Aunt Bekey tried to appease her husband with vodka. He'd hit her with
his fist, and she would run and bring him some more. That Aunt Bekey!
How many times her husband beat her within an inch of her life, and she
forgave him everything. And Grandfather Momun forgave him. Why
should they forgive? Such people should not be forgiven. He was a rotten
man, a bad man. Who needed him here? They'd be much better off without
him.

The boy's embittered imagination conjured up a picture of just

punishment for his uncle. All together, they jumped on Orozkul and
dragged him, fat, huge, dirty, to the river. There they swung him and threw
him into the wildest, most turbulent rapids. And he pleaded for Aunt
Bekey's forgiveness, and Grandfather Momun's. For he, of course, could not
become a fish.

These thoughts relieved the boy. He even wanted to laugh when he

imagined Uncle Orozkul thrashing about in the river, his velvet hat floating
next to him.

But, unfortunately, the grown-ups did not do the things the boy thought
would be just. They did everything the other way around. Orozkul would
come home tipsy, and they would welcome him as if nothing were wrong.
Grandpa would take his horse, his wife would run to make the samovar. As
though everybody had been doing nothing but waiting for his coming. And
he'd begin to carry on. At first he would lament and cry. How was it, he'd
complain, that every man, even the lowest good-for-nothing whose hand
you need not shake, had children, as many as his heart desired? Five, even
ten. In what way was he, Orozkul, worse than others? What was wrong with
him? Didn't he have a good job? Thank God, he was chief overseer of the
forest preserve. Was he some homeless tramp? But even Gypsies had their
brats, swarms of them. Or was he a nobody, without respect from anyone?
He had everything. He was a success in every way. He had a fine saddle
horse, and a handsome whip in his hands, and he was welcomed and
honored wherever he went. Then why were other men of his age already
celebrating their children's weddings, while he . . . What was he without a
son, without his own seed?

Aunt &key also wept, bustled about, tried to please her husband. She
brought out the bottle she had tucked away and took a drink herself to
drown her troubles. And so it went, till Orozkul would suddenly go wild
and take out all his anger on her, on his own wife. And she forgave him
everything. And grandfather forgave him. Nobody tied him up. He'd sober
up by morning, and his wife, all black and blue, would have tea ready for
him. Grandpa would already have his horse out, fed and saddled. Orozkul
would drink his tea, mount his horse, and once again he was the chief, the
master of all the San-Tash forests. And it never occurred to anyone that a
man like that should have been thrown into the river a long time ago. . . .

It was dark. Night had fallen.

And so the day ended, the day when the boy was given his first
schoolbag.

As he was going to bed, he could not think of a place for his

schoolbag. Finally, he put it next to his head. The boy did not know, he
would learn later, that half the class would have exactly the same
schoolbags. But that would not upset him anyway. His own would remain a
very special one. Nor did he know that new events awaited him in his small
life, that a day would come when he'd be left alone in the whole world, with
nothing but his schoolbag. And that the reason for it all would be his
favorite tale about the Horned Mother Deer.
 That evening he had a strong desire to hear it again. Old Momun was
also fond of it and told it as though he had witnessed everything himself,
sighing, weeping, falling silent now and then, and listening to his own
thoughts.

But the boy did not venture to disturb his grandfather. He understood
that old Momun's mind was not on tales that evening. "We'll ask him
another time," the boy whispered to his schoolbag. "Tonight I shall tell you
about the Horned Mother Deer, word for word, just like grandpa. And I
shall speak so low that nobody will hear. And you will listen. I like to tell
stories and see everything before me, as in the movies. Well, now. Grandpa
says that all of this is true. It really happened. . .
 4
It happened long ago. In ancient, ancient times, when there were more
forests on earth than grass, and more water in our country than dry land, a
Kirghiz tribe lived by the banks of a wide, cold river. The river's name was
Enesai. It flows far from here, in Siberia. To go there on horseback, you
must ride three years and three months. Today this river is called Yenisei,
but then its name was Enesai. And that is why there is a song that goes like
this:

Is there a river wider than you, Enesai,

Is there a land more beloved than you, Enesai,

Is there a sorrow deeper than you, Enesai,

Is there a freedom freer than you, Enesai?

There is no river wider than you, Enesai,

There is no land more beloved than you, Enesai,

There is no sorrow deeper than you, Enesai,

There is no freedom freer than you, Enesai.

Many peoples lived along the Enesai in those days. Their lives were
hard because they were always at war with each other. Many enemies
surrounded the Kirghiz tribe. It was attacked by one enemy, then by
another. Often the Kirghiz themselves made raids on others, took away their
cattle, burned their dwellings, killed the people. They killed everyone they
could—such was the time. Man had no pity on man. Man destroyed man. It
became so bad that there was no one left to sow grain, breed cattle, go out
hunting. It became easier to live by looting: you went out, you killed, you
plundered. But blood had to be paid for by more blood; revenge by more
revenge. And so blood flowed in rivers. Men lost all reason. There was
nobody to make peace among enemies. The greatest glory went to those
who knew how to catch the enemy unaware, destroy the alien tribe to the
last soul, and seize its cattle and its wealth.

A strange, sad bird appeared in the taiga. It sang and wept all night in a
grieving, human voice. It cried, flying from branch to branch: "Great
trouble is coming! Great trouble is coming!" And it came to pass. The
dreadful day arrived.

That clay the Kirghiz tribe on Enesai was burying its old chief. The
great hero Kulche had led the tribe in peace and war for many years. He had
led his warriors in numerous campaigns and fought in many battles. He had
survived the battles, but at last his dying hour had come. His tribesmen
sorrowed greatly for two days, and on the third day they prepared to lay the
hero's body in the earth. According to ancient custom, a chief's body had to
be carried on its final journey along the bank of the Enesai, over its cliffs
and crags, so that the soul might bid farewell to the mother river from the
heights. For "ene" means "mother," and “sai" means "river." And now, for
the last time, the soul would sing the old song:

Is there a river wider than you, Enesai,

Is there a land more beloved than you, Enesai,

Is there a sorrow deeper than you, Enesai,

Is there a freedom freer than you, Enesai?

There is no river wider than you, Enesai,

There is no land more beloved than you, Enesai,

There is no sorrow deeper than you, Enesai,

There is no freedom freer than you, Enesai.

 On the burial mound, beside the open grave, the hero's body was lifted
over the heads of his people and shown the four corners of the world. The
people chanted: "Here is your river. Here is your sky. Here is your earth.
Here are we, born of the same root as you. We have come to see you off.
Sleep in peace." And, to keep his memory alive for future generations, a
rock was set upon his grave.

During the days of the funeral, the yurts of the whole tribe were put up
in a row along the riverbank, so that every family could bid the hero good-
bye from its doorway as his body was carried past. Every family lowered
the white flag of mourning to the ground, wailing and weeping. Then it
joined the procession as it went on to the next yurt, where the people would
once more bow the white flag of mourning and weep and wail, and so on to
the end, until they came to the burial mound.

In the morning of that day, when the sun rose for its daily journey, all
preparations were complete. The standards with horsetails on their staffs
and the hero's battle dress and armor had been brought out. His horse was
covered with the funeral cloth. The musicians were ready to blow into their
karnais—their battle trumpets; the drummers were ready to strike their
drums so that the whole taiga would rock, and birds would fly up like a
cloud into the sky and whirl overhead with screams and moans, and beasts
would rush, gasping and snorting, through the forest thickets, and grass
would bow to earth, and echoes rumble in the mountains, and mountains
tremble. The mourners loosened their hair ready to weep and chant in praise
of the dead hero Kulche. The warriors dropped on one knee, to raise the
mortal body on their powerful shoulders. Everyone was ready, waiting for
the body to be carried out. And at the edge of the woods nine sacrificial
mares, nine bulls, and nine times nine sheep stood tethered, to be
slaughtered for the funeral feast.

But now came something unforeseen. Although the tribes along the
Enesai warred constantly among themselves, it was the custom that on days
when chiefs were being buried neighbors were not to be attacked. Yet now
hosts of enemies, who had stealthily surrounded the encampment of the
sorrowing Kirghiz tribe during the night, rushed out of their hiding places
on all sides, and not a man had time to mount his horse or seize his
weapons. A frightful carnage followed. Everyone was killed. The enemy
had planned it so, in order to put an end to the proud Kirghiz tribe forever.
No one was spared, so that none would be left to remember the crime and
avenge it, so that time would bury all traces of the past with shifting sands.
And who could tell, then, what had been, and what had not been . . . ?

It takes a long time to bear and rear a man, but killing him is faster
than fast. Many people lay hacked to death in pools of blood. Many had
leaped into the river to escape from the swords and spears, and drowned in
the waves of the Enesai. And all along the bank, along the cliffs and rocks,
the Kirghiz yurts were flaming, for miles and miles. No one had managed to
escape, no one survived. Everything was burned and destroyed. The bodies
of the vanquished were thrown from the cliffs into the Enesai. The enemies
rejoiced: "Now these lands are ours! These woods are ours! These herds are
ours!"

The enemies were leaving with rich booty and never noticed the two
children, a boy and a girl, coming home from the forest. Mischievous and
disobedient, they had run off into the woods that morning to strip bark for
baskets. In the excitement of their game, they had gone deeper and deeper
into the thickets. Hearing the din and noise of the attack, they rushed back,
but found nobody alive—neither their fathers, nor their mothers, nor their
brothers and sisters. The children remained without kith or kin. They ran,
crying, from one burnt yurt to another, but did not find a single living soul.
In one hour, they were turned into orphans, alone in the whole world. And
in the distance billowed a cloud of dust; the enemies were driving to their
own lands the herds and flocks seized in the bloody raid.

The children saw the dust raised by the hooves and ran after it. After
their cruel enemies the children ran, weeping and calling. Only children
would do such a thing. Instead of hiding from the murderers, they tried to
catch up with them. Anything seemed better than being left alone. Any
place seemed better than their dreadful, wrecked, accursed home. Hand in
hand, the boy and the girl ran after the herds, crying out to the people to
wait, to take them along. But how could their feeble voices be heard amidst
the neighing and the clattering of hooves, how could children overtake the
raiders, galloping hotly away with their booty?
 The boy and the girl ran for a long time, but they never caught up with
the enemy. At last, exhausted, they fell upon the ground. They were afraid
to look around them, they were afraid to stir. They pressed themselves to
one another and never noticed when they fell asleep.

It's not for nothing people say an orphan has seven destinies. The night
passed safely. No beast had touched the children, no forest monsters had
dragged them off into the woods. When they awakened, it was morning.
The sun shone brightly. Birds were singing. The children rose and followed
the raiders' trail again. On the way they picked berries and roots. They
walked and walked, and on the third day they halted on a mountain and
looked down. Below, on a wide green meadow a great feast was in
progress. There were yurts without number, rows upon rows of smoking
fires, and countless multitudes of people. Young girls flew up and down in
swings, singing songs. Powerful men circled around each other like golden
eagles to amuse the people, wrestling one another to the ground. Those
were the enemies, celebrating their victory.

The boy and girl stood on the mountain, not venturing to approach.
But the desire to be near the fires was too strong —a tasty smell of roasting
meat, bread, and wild onions came from them. The children could not resist
and came down from the mountain. The hosts wondered at the newcomers,
surrounded them:

"Who are you? Where are you from?"

"We are hungry," said the boy and the girl. "Give us something to eat."

The people guessed who they were from their manner of speech. They
shouted, argued—should they, or should they not kill the children, the
remaining enemy seed, at once, or take them to the khan? While they
disputed, a kind woman managed to slip the children pieces of roast
horsemeat. They were dragged off to the khan, but they could not let go of
the food. They were brought to a tall red yurt, guarded by warriors with
silver hatchets. And the troubling news that children of the Kirghiz tribe
appeared from who knows where in the encampment spread among the
people like wildfire. What could it mean? Everyone abandoned the games
and the feasting and came running in a huge crowd to the khan's tent. The
khan was at that moment sitting on a snow-white rug with his leading
warriors, drinking koumyss sweetened with honey, listening to songs of
praise. When the khan heard why the people had come to him, he flew into
a mighty rage: "How dare you trouble me? Haven't we exterminated the
Kirghiz tribe, to the last man? Have I not made you masters of the Enesai
for all time? Why have you gathered here, cowardly souls? Look who it is
before you! Hey, Pockmarked Lame Old Woman," cried the khan. And
when she stepped out of the crowd, he said to her: "Take them away into the
taiga and do what is needed to put a final end to the Kirghiz tribe, so that no
trace of it is left, so that its name is forgotten forever. Go, Pockmarked
Lame Old Woman, do as I bid you . . ."

The Pockmarked Lame Old Woman obeyed silently. She took the boy
and girl by the hand and led them away. For a long time they walked
through forest, then they came to the bank of the Enesai, to a high cliff
rising over it. The Pockmarked Lame Old Woman stopped the children and
placed them side by side at the edge of the cliff. And, before pushing them
down, she said:

"O great river Enesai! If a mountain should be cast into your depth, the
mountain will sink like a small stone. If a century-old pine should be cast
down, it will be carried off like a small twig. Take, then, into your waters
two grains of sand, two human children. There is no room for them on
earth. Am I to tell you, Enesai? If the stars became men, the sky would not
be wide enough for them. If the fish became men, the rivers and the seas
would not suffice for them. Am I to tell you, Enesai? Take them and carry
them away. Let them leave our weary world in childhood, with pure souls,
with a child's conscience, unstained by evil thoughts and evil deeds, so they
will never know human pain or cause suffering to others. Take them, take
them, great Enesai . . ."

The boy and the girl wept and sobbed. They neither heard nor
understood the old woman's words. Just looking down from the height filled
them with terror. And down below the wild waves raged, rolling over one
another.

"Embrace now, little children, for the last time, say good-bye to one
another," said the Pockmarked Lame Old Woman. She folded up her sleeves
to make it easier to push them down the cliff. And then she said: "Forgive
me children. This must be your destiny—yet it is not of my own will that I
shall do this deed, but for your own good. . . ."

But just as she had spoken, a voice was heard:

"Wait, big wise woman, do not kill the innocent children."

The Pockmarked Lame Old Woman turned, looked, and wondered:

before her stood a deer, a mother deer. Her eyes were huge and filled with
sorrow and reproach. She was as white as the first milk of a young doe. Her
belly was covered with soft brown fur like a young camel's. Her horns were
of rare beauty, spreading wide like the branches of a tree in autumn. And
her udders were as pure and smooth as the breasts of a nursing woman.

"Who are you? Why do you speak in the human tongue?" asked the
Pockmarked Lame Old Woman.

"I am the Mother Deer," she answered. "And I speak in human words
because you will not understand me and will not obey me otherwise."

"What do you wish, Mother Deer?"

"Let the children go, big wise woman. I beg you, give them to me."

"What do you want them for?"

"Men killed my twins, my two fawns. I am looking for children."

'You wish to nurse and rear them?"

'Yes, big wise woman.''

"Have you thought properly about it, Mother Deer?" laughed the
Pockmarked Lame Old Woman. "They are human children. They will grow
up and kill your fawns."

"When they grow up they will not kill my fawns," re-plied the Mother
Deer. "I shall be their mother, and they, my children. Will they kill, then,
their own sisters and brothers?"

"Oh, you can't tell, Mother Deer, you do not know men." The
Pockmarked Lame Old Woman shook her head. "They have no pity for one
another, and you talk of forest animals. I would give you these orphans, so
you might learn the truth of my words yourself, but even these children will
be killed by people. Why do you need all that grief?"

"I shall lead the children away into a distant land where nobody will
find them. Spare the children, big wise woman, let them go. I shall be a
faithful mother to them. My udder is full. My milk is crying out for
children. It is begging for children."

"Well, if that is so," said the Pockmarked Lame Old Woman after
thinking a while, "take them, and lead them away from here as fast as you
can go. Take the orphans to your distant land. But if they perish on the long
journey, if robbers kill them, if your human children repay you with black
ingratitude, blame it on yourself."

The Mother Deer thanked the Pockmarked Lame Old Woman. And to
the boy and the girl she said:

"Now I am your mother, you are my children. I shall lead you to a

distant land, where a hot sea, Issyk-Kul, lies in the midst of snowy
mountains."

Happily, the boy and the girl ran after the Horned Mother Deer. But
soon they tired and weakened, and the way was long—from one end of the
world to another. They would not have gone far but for the Horned Mother
Deer: she fed them her milk and warmed them with her body at night. And
so they walked and walked. Their old homeland, Enesai, was farther and
farther behind them, but their new home, Issyk¬Kul, was still a long way
off. A summer and a winter, a spring and a summer and an autumn, and yet
another winter and another spring and summer and autumn they journeyed
through dense forest and parched steppe, over shifting sands, across high
mountains and rushing streams. They were pursued by packs of wolves, but
the Horned Mother Deer would take the children on her back and carry
them away from the ravening beasts. Hunters with bows and arrows
galloped after them on their horses, shouting: "A deer has stolen human
children! Hold it! Catch it!" And they sent arrows flying at them. The
Horned Mother Deer carried the children away from them, too, from those
unbidden saviors. She ran faster than an arrow and only whispered, "Hold
on to me tightly, my children, we are being chased."

At last the Horned Mother Deer brought her children to Issyk-Kul.

They stood on a high mountain and marveled. All around them were snowy
mountain ranges, and below, amid mountains covered with green forests,
stretched the lake, as far as the eye could see. Whitecapped waves rolled
over the blue water, winds drove them from afar and drove them far away.
It was impossible to tell where Issyk-Kul began and where it ended. The
sun was rising on one side, and on the other it was still night. It was
impossible to count the mountains around Issyk-Kul, or guess how many
snowy mountains lay beyond them.

"This is your new homeland," said the Horned Mother Deer. "You will
live here, plow the land, catch fish, and breed cattle. Live here in peace for
a thousand years. May your tribe last and increase. May your descendants
remember the tongue you have brought with you, and may it be sweet for
them to speak and sing in this tongue. Live as is proper for human beings.
And I shall be with you and with your children's children for all time . . ."

This was how the boy and the girl, the last of the Kirghiz tribe, found a
new homeland on the banks of the blessed and eternal Issyk-Kul.

Time flowed quickly. The boy became a strong man, and the girl, a
grown woman. They married and lived as man and wife. And the Horned
Mother Deer had not left Issyk-Kul; she lived in the surrounding woods.

One day at dawn, a storm swept Issyk-Kul. It roared and crashed upon
the banks. The woman went into labor, about to give birth to a child. She
was in great pain. And the man was frightened. He ran up the mountainside
and called loudly:

"Where are you, Horned Mother Deer? Do you hear the noise of Issyk-
Kul? Your daughter is giving birth. Come quickly, Horned Mother Deer,
help us."
 And then he heard a distant tinkling, as of a caravan bell. It grew
louder and louder. The Horned Mother Deer came running. Upon her horns
she carried a cradle—a beshik. It was made of white birch, and a silver bell
was fastened at its head. This bell still rings on the beshiks of Issyk-Kul
babies. The mother rocks the cradle, and the silver bell tinkles, as though
the Horned Mother Deer were running from afar, hurrying, bringing a
birchwood cradle on her horns.

As soon as the Horned Mother Deer appeared, the woman bore her
child.

"This cradle," said the Horned Mother Deer, "is for your firstborn. You
shall have many children—seven sons and seven daughters."

The mother and the father rejoiced. They named their firstborn
Bugubai, in honor of the Horned Mother Deer. Bugubai grew up and took a
beauty of the Kipchak tribe as his wife. And the clan of Bugu, of the
Horned Mother Deer, began to multiply. The Bugan clan on Issyk-Kul
increased in strength and numbers, and the Bugans revered the Horned
Mother Deer. Over the entrance to their yurts, the Bugans embroidered the
horns of a deer, so that all who approached would know that the yurt
belonged to the Bugan clan. When Bugans repulsed invading enemies,
when they competed in races, the cry "Bugu!" rang out, and always the
Bugans were the winners. And in the forests around Issyk-Kul wandered
white horned deer whose beauty was envied by the stars in heaven. They
were the children of the Horned Mother Deer. No one touched them,
everyone protected them. When a Bugan met a deer, he would dismount
and yield the way to it. The beauty of a beloved girl was compared to the
beauty of a white deer.

So it was until the death of a certain very rich, very important Bugan.
He had owned a thousand thousand sheep, a thousand thousand horses, and
all the people around were his shepherds. His sons arranged a great funeral
feast. They invited to the feast the most famous men from all ends of the
earth. A thousand yurts were set up for the guests along the bank of Issyk-
Kul. No one knows how many animals were slaughtered, how much
koumyss was drunk, how many platters of fine delicacies were served. The
rich man's sons went about with their heads high: let people know what
wealthy and generous heirs remained after the dead, how much they
honored their father and his memory. . . . (Ah, my son, it's bad when men
seek to distinguish themselves not by their wisdom, but their wealth!)

And singers, mounted on stallions presented to them by the dead man's

sons, resplendent in their gift sable hats and silk robes, vied with each other
in praising the dead and his heirs:

"Where under the sun will you see such a happy life, such a splendid
funeral feast?" sang one.

"The like of this has not been seen from the day of creation!" sang
another.

"Nowhere except among us are parents revered so greatly. Nowhere do

sons render so much honor to their fathers' memories and their holy names,"
sang a third.

"Hey, singers, makers of verse, what's all this idle noise? What words
are great enough to equal such bounty? What words are bright enough to
tell the dead man's glory?" sang a fourth.

And so they went on day and night. (Ah, my son, it's bad when poets
compete in singing praises—they turn from singers into enemies of song!)

The famous funeral feast went on and on, as though it were a

celebration of some holy day. The vain sons of the rich man wanted to
outdo all others, to put all others in the shade, to send their own fame
ringing throughout the land. And then they took it into their heads to set the
horns of a deer over their father's grave, to make it known to everyone that
this was the resting place of their glorious parent, who belonged to the clan
of the Horned Mother Deer. (Ah, my son, even in olden times it was said
that riches lead to pride, and pride to madness.)

The sons of the rich man decided to do their father this unheard-of
honor, and nothing could hold them back. They did as they said. They sent
out hunters. The hunters killed a deer and chopped off his horns. And the
horns were wide as the wings of a soaring eagle. The sons liked the horns.
They had eighteen branches each—that meant the deer was eighteen years
old. A pair of great, magnificent horns! The sons com¬manded craftsmen to
set the horns upon their father's grave.

The old men of the clan were angered:

"By what right was a deer brought down? Who dared to raise a hand
against the children of the Horned Mother Deer?"

But the rich man's heirs replied:

"The deer was killed on our land. And everything that walks, or
crawls, or flies on our possessions, from a camel to a fly, is ours. We know
ourselves how to dispose of what is ours. Get you hence!"

The servants of the rich sons lashed the old men with whips, set them
upon their horses, back to front, and drove them out in disgrace.

And that was the beginning. Great trouble came to the descendants of
the Horned Mother Deer. Almost everyone began to hunt the white deer in
the forests. Every Bugan deemed it his duty to set deer's horns on his
ancestors' graves. This came to be considered a good thing, a token of
respect for the memory of the dead. And those who were unable to procure
the horns, were now looked down on and held to be unworthy. People
began to trade in deer horns, to stock them up for the future. There were
even some men of the clan of the Horned Mother Deer who made it their
livelihood to kill deer for their horns and sell them for money. (Ah, my son,
where money enters, there is no room for a kind word, no room for beauty.)

It was an evil time for the deer in the Issyk-Kul forests. There was no
mercy for them. The deer ran up the steepest cliffs, but even there they
found no safety. Packs of hunting dogs were set loose to drive them straight
toward hunters hiding in the bushes, and the hunters struck them down with
never a bullet going astray. The deer were killed in herds, in droves. People
laid wagers as to who would get more horns, or finer ones, with the largest
number of branches on them.
 And there were no more deer. The mountains became deserted. There
was no sound of deer at midnight or at dawn. No longer could men see, in
woods or clearings, deer grazing, leaping with their horns thrown back,
crossing abysses like flying birds. Men were born who had never seen a
deer in all their lives. They only heard old tales about them and saw the
horns on ancient graves.

And what became of the Horned Mother Deer?

She took offense, she took grievous offense at people. It is said that
when the deer no longer could find safety any-where from bullets and
hunting dogs, when so few deer were left that you could count them on your
fingers, the Horned Mother Deer went up onto the highest mountain, said
goodbye to Issyk-Kul, and led away her last remaining children over the
great pass, to other regions and other mountains.

Such are the things that happen on earth. And this is the tale. Believe it
or don't believe it, as you will.

And when the Horned Mother Deer was leaving, she said that she
would never return . . .
 5
It was autumn again in the mountains. Again, after a noisy summer,
everything was still. The dust had settled after the cattle had been driven
away. The fires were out. The herds were gone for the winter. The men
were gone. The mountains were deserted.

The eagles were already flying singly, sending out their throaty,
guttural cries. The noise of the river was muted: the river had grown used to
its bed during the summer, had scraped it smoother, had grown shallower.
Grass ceased to grow and began to wither on the root. The leaves, wearied
of clinging to the branches, began to drop.

And fresh, silvery snow was already settling overnight upon the
highest peaks. By morning the dark ranges would turn hoary like the necks
of silver foxes.

The wind grew colder, gathered chill as it blew through the canyons.
But the days were still bright and dry.

The woods across the river from the forest post were rapidly entering
the fall. From the very edge of the water and up to the line of the Black
Forest, the smokeless fire of autumn ran over the steep wall of the smaller
leafy trees. Brightest of all—a flaming orange—were the birch and aspen
thickets which climbed persistently up to the heights of the great forest just
below the snow line, to the dark kingdom of pines and firs.

In the Black Forest it was clean, as always, and severe as in a temple.

Nothing but the hard, brown trunks, the dry fragrance of resin, the rusty
needles thickly carpeting the forest floor. Nothing but the wind, silently
flowing among the crowns of the old pines.

But today the mountain quiet was shattered by the ceaseless chattering
of startled jackdaws. In a large, furiously screaming flock they circled
around and around over the pine forest. They had taken alarm at the very
first stroke of the ax, and now, clamoring all at once, as though they had
been robbed in broad daylight, they pursued the two men who were
maneuvering a felled pine tree down the mountainside.

The pine was dragged by chains attached to a horse's harness. Orozkul

walked first, leading the horse by the bridle. Like a bull, with his head
thrust forward, his coat catching at the bushes, he breathed heavily. Behind
him and behind the log, Grandpa Momun hurried to keep up. It was hard for
him too. In his hands he held a birchwood pole with which he guided the
log. The log kept getting stuck over stumps and rocks. And at the steep
descents it stubbornly tried to slip crosswise and roll down. That would be a
disaster—it would surely smash a man to death.

The most dangerous part fell to the one who walked behind,
controlling the log with the pole. But you never could tell. Orozkul had
already jumped aside several times, leaving the bridle. And each time he
was scalded with shame at the sight of the old man straining to hold the log
at the risk of his life and waiting for Orozkul to return to the horse and take
him by the bridle. But men speak truly when they say that, to conceal one's
shame, one has to heap shame on an¬other.

"What's the matter, are you trying to do me in?" Orozkul shouted at his
father-in-law.

There was no one around to hear Orozkul or to judge him. His father-
in-law answered meekly that he himself could also have been struck down
by the log; why shout at him as though he were doing it on purpose?

But this infuriated Orozkul still more.

"Just listen to him!" he growled indignantly. "If you are smashed, it's
no great loss, you've lived your life. Why should you care? But if I am
gone, who will take your daughter? Who needs her, barren as a devil's whip
. . ."

"You are a hard man, my son. You've no respect for others," Momun
replied.
 Orozkul, unaccustomed to any opposition, halted, measuring the old
man with his glance:

"Old men like you have long been lying by their hearths, warming
their butts in the ashes. And you're still earning wages, whatever they are.
And how come you're earning those wages? Because of me. What other
respect do you want?"

"Oh, never mind, it just slipped out," Momun gave in.

They went on. After another stretch, they stopped for a rest. The horse
was lathered and dark with sweat.

And the jackdaws still circled overhead, refusing to calm down. The
sky was black with them, and they kept screaming as if their only concern
that day was to keep up that deafening clamor.

"They sense an early winter coming," said Momun, trying to divert the
conversation and assuage Orozkul's anger. "Getting ready to leave. They
don't like to be disturbed," he added, as though apologizing for the stupid
birds.

"Who disturbs them?" Orozkul turned sharply, his face suddenly

purple. "You babble too much, old man," he said quietly, with a threat in his
voice.

"Hinting," he thought. "I'm not supposed to touch a pine or cut a

branch—just for the sake of his damned jackdaws. We'll see about that. I
am still the master here." He threw a vicious glance at the frantic birds.

"If only I had a machine gun now!" And he turned away with an
obscene oath.

Momun was silent. It was not the first time he had to listen to
Orozkul's swearing. "It's come over him again," the old man thought sadly.
"Takes a drink and turns into a beast. And when he has a hangover, you
daren't say a word either. What makes people get like that?" Momun
grieved silently. "You do them good, and they reply with evil. And nothing
will make him stop and think, or feel ashamed. As though that's the way it
has to be. Always sure he's right. So long as he is comfortable. Everybody
around must jump to please him. And if you do not want to, he'll force you.
It's lucky when a man like that sits in the woods, in the mountains, and has
no more people under him than you can count on two fingers. But what if
he is higher up, with more power? Heaven help us. . . . And there's no end
to such men. They'll always grab theirs. And no place to escape from them.
Wherever you turn, there he is, waiting for you, ready to shake the soul out
of you, just to make life better for himself. And he will always prove
himself right in the end. No, there's no getting rid of them . . ."

"That will do. Enough," Orozkul broke in on the old man's thoughts.
"Let's get going," he ordered. And they went on with their task.

Orozkul had been in a black mood all day. In the morning, instead of
crossing the river with the tools, Momun had hurried off to take his
grandson to school. The old man was going into his second childhood!
Every morning he saddled the horse to take the brat to school, then he'd ride
off again to bring him back. Bothering with that abandoned little bastard.
Imagine, he can't be late to school! When there's a job like this to be done,
and God knows how it will turn out. The job can wait, eh? "I'll be back in a
second," he says. "It would be a disgrace before the teacher to let the boy be
late for class." The old fool! Who is she, anyway, that teacher? Going
around five years in the same coat. All she thinks of is copybooks and
schoolbags. . . . Always asking for a lift on the road to the district center,
always short of one thing or another—coal for the school, glass for the
windows, chalk, rags. Would a decent teacher go to work in such a school?
The names they'll think of—"midget school.' It's midget, all right. And
what's the good of it? Real teachers work in the city. There the schools are
built of glass. The teachers wear ties. But that's the city . . . All the high
officials riding in the streets! And the cars! They make you want to stop and
stretch out at attention until they roll by, those big, black, shiny, gliding
cars. And the city people don't even seem to notice them, they're always in a
hurry, always rushing somewhere. That's where the life is, in the city! If he
could only move there, get himself a decent job. There, people are respected
according to their position. If a man's supposed to get respect, he gets it!
The bigger the position, the more respect. Civilized people. And if you visit
someone or receive a present, you don't have to drag logs down mountains
or anything like that to pay for it. Not the way it's here. A fellow will slip
you fifty rubles, or, if you're lucky, a hundred, haul off the lumber, and then
scribble a complaint against you: Orozkul takes bribes. Bastards. . . .
Ignorant fools!

Ah, if he could only get to the city. . . . He'd send them to the devil—
all those mountains and woods and logs, a hundred curses on them, and that
empty-bellied wife of his, and the brainless old man with that pup he's
fussing over like he was something special. He'd know how to live—he'd
get himself going like a horse fed on the finest oats! He'd make people
respect him properly. "Orozkul Balazhanovich, may I step into your office,
please?" He'd marry a city woman. And why not? Some actress, maybe, one
of those beauties that sing and dance with a microphone in their hands.
People say the main thing such a woman cares for is a man's job. He'd take
her by the elbow—himself dressed up, tie and all—and off they would go to
the movies. She'd walk next to him, heels clicking on the sidewalk,
smelling of perfume. And people would turn to sniff the perfume. Before
you knew it, there'd be children. He'd send his son to school to be a lawyer,
and teach his daughter to play the piano. You could tell city children at
once, they were so clever. At home they spoke nothing but Russian; they
wouldn't bother with country words. He'd bring his children up like that,
too: "Father dear, mother dear, I want this, I want that . . ." Would a man
stint any-thing for his own flesh and blood? Eh, wouldn't he put a lot of
people in their place, show them who he is! In what way was he worse than
others? Were all those, up above, any better? Just men like him—only
luckier. And he had let his luck slip by. His own fault. After the forestry
courses he ought to have gone on to the city, to technical school, or even
college. He had been too much in a hurry, too anxious to get a post. A small
one, but a post all the same. And now look at him, clambering over
mountains, dragging logs like a donkey . . . And all those jackdaws on top
of it. What were they yelling for, why were they circling over them around
and around? Ah, if only he had a machine gun. . . .

Orozkul had good reason to be upset. He'd had himself a merry time
all summer. The fall was coming on, and the end of summer meant the end
of visiting with shepherds and herdsmen. How did the song go? "The
flowers have finished blooming in the mountain meadow, time to go down
into the valley . . ."

Autumn was here. And time for Orozkul to pay for all the honor, the
dinners, the debts, and promises. And for the bragging: "What do you need?
Two pine logs for beams? That's all? No trouble—just come and get them."

He'd bragged, received his presents, drunk their vodka, and now,
dripping sweat, gasping, and cursing one and all, he had to drag those logs
over the mountains. He had to pay through his nose. And, generally, all his
life had gone awry. Suddenly, a desperate idea flashed through his mind:
"Eh, I'll send it all to hell and run off wherever my eyes will lead." But he
realized at once that he would not run anywhere. Nobody needed him, and
he would not find the life he longed for anywhere.

Just try to leave or go back on your promises. Your pals will turn you
in themselves. The people nowadays! Worthless trash. Year before last he
had promised one of his own clansmen, a Bugan, a pine log for a gift lamb,
and in the fall he didn't feel like climbing all the way up for a pine. It's
easily said, but try to get up there and fell it and bring it down the mountain.
Especially if the pine has stood there dozens of years. Why, no one in his
right mind would want to tackle such a job, not for all the gold in the world.
And, just as if in spite, old Momun was sick in bed at that time. And one
man couldn't manage it—nobody could ever bring a log down by himself.
He might be able to fell the pine, but never get it down. . . . If he had known
ahead of time all that would come of it, he would have taken Seidakhmat
and gone up with him.

Orozkul was too lazy to clamber for the log, and he decided to get rid
of his clansman with any old piece of timber. But the fellow wouldn't have
it. Nothing, but a genuine pine log would do. "You can take lambs all right,
but you can't keep your word?" Orozkul blew up and threw him out: "You
don't want this one? Then get the devil out of here." Well, the man was no
ninny. He scribbled such a complaint against the overseer of the San-Tash
Forest Preserve, filled with all sorts of truths and untruths, that Orozkul
could have been shot as a "wrecker of the socialist woods." For a long time
after that he was dragged before all sorts of investigating commissions—
from the district center, from the forest ministry. He had barely managed to
clear himself. . . . That's a kinsman for you! With all that stupid talk: "We're
the children of the Horned Mother Deer. One for all, and all for one!" And
then they're ready to go at each other's throats, or send a man to prison for a
kopek.

It was a long time ago that people believed in the Mother Deer. How
ignorant can you get? Ridiculous. Today everybody is civilized, everybody
is literate. Who needs those Fairy tales? They're only good for children.

After that narrow escape Orozkul vowed to himself never Again to

give as much as a twig or a splinter to anybody—not o acquaintances, not to
kinsmen, let them be thrice children of the Horned Mother Deer.

But summer came. White yurts appeared in the green mountain

meadows. Herds bleated and neighed. The smoke of fires rose by the banks
of streams and rivers. The sun shone, the breeze carried the fragrance of
flowers, the tempting smell of koumyss. It's good to sit in the fresh air
outside the yurt, on the green grass, in a circle of friends, enjoying koumyss
and lamb. Then wash it down with a glass of vodka, until your head begins
to swim, and you begin to feel such Power in yourself that you could surely
pull a tree up with its roots, or turn a mountain upside down. On such days
Orozkul forgot his vow. It was sweet to hear himself called t he big master
of the big forest. And again he would promise, again accept gifts. And
again some centuries-old pine stood proudly in the woods, never suspecting
that its days were numbered—just wait until the autumn months . . .

And autumn stole up quietly into the mountains from the harvested
fields and nosed about in the woods. And wherever it passed the grass
turned rusty, the leaves turned red.

Berries ripened. Lambs grew into sheep. They were divided into flocks
—the ewes by themselves, the young rams by themselves. The women
stacked dried cheeses in winter hags. The men discussed the order of their
descent back into the valleys. And before leaving, those who had made
agreements in the summertime with Orozkul would tell him the day and
hour when they would drive up to the forest post with trucks for the
promised timber.
 That evening, too, a truck was coming with a trailer for two pine logs.
One of the logs was already below, already brought across the river and
dragged to the spot where the truck was to stop. This was the second one
they were taking down. If Orozkul could now give back—throw up—all he
had drunk and eaten for those damned logs, he'd do it instantly, just to be rid
of the toil and misery he now had to endure.

Alas, there was no way of changing his wretched lot in the mountains.
The truck was coming in the evening, to haul off the logs.

He would be lucky if everything turned out well. The road ran right
across the Soviet farm, right past the office. There was no other road. And
the Soviet farm had frequent visitors—the militia, inspecting commissions,
and heaven knows who else from the district center. If they caught sight of
the timber, they'd start up right away: "Where from? Where to?"

Orozkul's back turned cold at the thought. And anger boiled within
him against everything and everybody: the screeching jackdaws overhead,
the miserable old Momun, that lazy good-for-nothing Seidakhmat, who
guessed what was coming and left three days ago to sell potatoes in the city.
He knew there would be logs to be dragged down the mountains, and so he
slipped away. . . . And now he wouldn't be back until he finished all his
business at the market. If he hadn't run off, Orozkul would have sent him to
bring the logs down with the old man; he wouldn't have had to go through
all this misery himself.

But Seidakhmat was far away, and the jackdaws were also beyond
reach. He ached to give his wife a thrashing, but it would be a long time
before he got home. There was no one left but old Momun. Growing more
furious at every step, gasping in the thin mountain air, Orozkul walked head
on through the bushes, sparing neither the horse, nor the old man behind
him. Let him drop dead, that horse. Let him drop dead, that old man. Let
him drop dead himself of heart failure. To hell with the whole world, where
everything was wrong, where Orozkul was not appreciated according to his
merits and position.

No longer able to control himself, Orozkul led the horse across the
underbrush directly to a steep descent. Let Obliging Momun dance a little
around the log. And let him just try and fail to hold it. "I'll thrash the old
fool," Orozkul growled to himself. Ordinarily, he never would have
ventured on such a dangerous slope with a log in tow. This time some devil
must have tempted him. And before Momun had time to stop him, just as he
was shouting, "Where are you going? Stop!," the log whipped sideways on
the chain and, crashing through the underbrush, rolled downhill. The log
was fresh and heavy. Momun tried desperately to block it with his pole, to
hold it back. But the thrust of the log was so great that it knocked the pole
out of his hands.

It all happened in a second. The horse fell and was dragged down on
its side after the log. As it fell, it threw Orozkul. He rolled down, frantically
trying to catch at the bushes. And at that moment some horned animals
dashed in alarm through the underbrush. With high, strong leaps they
bounded away and disappeared in the birch thicket.

"Deer! Deer!" Grandfather Momun cried out, beside himself with

fright and joy. And instantly fell silent, as though he did not believe his
eyes.

And suddenly all was still in the mountains. The jackdaws vanished.
The log got stuck on its way down, crushing some strong young birches.
The horse, tangled in his harness, rose to his feet by himself.

Orozkul, bruised and torn, crawled aside. Momun rushed to his aid:

"Oh, holy Mother, Horned Mother Deer! It was she who saved us! Did
you see? They were the children of the Horned Mother Deer. Our Mother
has returned. You saw it!"

Still disbelieving that they had escaped disaster, Orozkul stood up,
sullen and shamed, and shook himself:

"Quit babbling, old man. That'll do. Get the horse un-tangled from the
harness."

Momun obediently hurried to free the horse.

 "Oh, miraculous Mother, Horned Deer!" he went on muttering happily.
"The deer have come back to our forest. The Horned Mother has not
forgotten us! She has forgiven our sin . . ."

"Still mumbling?" Orozkul snappped at him. He had already recovered

from the fright, and his anger returned. "Again your fairy tales? Touched in
the head himself, and thinks that others will believe his stupid notions!"

"I saw them with my own eyes. Deer." The old man would not yield.
"Haven't you seen them, my son? You saw them yourself."

"Well, and what if I did—two or three of them . . ." "Right, three. I

thought so too."

"Well, what of it? What's so damned great about it? A man could have
broken his neck, and this one makes a fuss over some deer. They must have
come across the pass. There are still deer, they say, on that side of the
mountains, in Kazakhstan. There's a preserve there too. They came, so they
came. It's none of our business. What has Kazakhstan to do with us?"

"Perhaps they'll settle here," Momun said dreamily. "If they would
only stay . . ."

"That's enough," Orozkul broke in. "Let's get going!"

They still had to go a long way down the mountain with the log, then
get the horse to drag it across the river. That was another difficult task. And
then, if they succeeded in bringing it across, there was the job of pulling it
uphill, to where the truck was to be loaded.

Orozkul felt altogether wretched. The whole world seemed unjust to

him. The mountains—they felt nothing, wanted nothing, complained of
nothing, just stood and stood there. The woods were drifting into autumn,
then winter, and found nothing wrong with that. Even the jackdaws flew
about freely, screaming to their hearts' content. The deer, if they were really
deer, had come from beyond the pass and would wander in the forest
anywhere they pleased. In the cities, carefree people walked on paved
streets, rode in taxis, sat in restaurants, enjoyed themselves. And only he
was condemned to exile in these mountains, to this misery. . . . Even
Obliging Momun, his worthless father-in-law, was happier than he: he
believed in fairy tales. The old fool. Fools were always pleased with life.

Orozkul hated his life. This kind of life was not for him. It was for
people like Momun. What did Momun need? Bending his back in labor day
in, day out, without rest. And not once in his lifetime had he been master
over a single man; forever ordered about by someone else. Even his old
woman had him under her thumb, with never a word of protest from him.
Such a miserable creature, yet a fairy tale could make him happy. Sees a
few deer in the woods, and he's moved to tears, as though he's met his own
brothers after searching for them for a hundred years.

Oh, what's the use . . .

They came at last to the final ledge, beyond which lay a sheer descent
to the river. They halted to rest.

Something was smoking in the forest post across the river, near
Orozkul's house. They could tell it was the samovar. Orozkul's wife was
waiting for him, but this brought him no relief. He gasped for breath, his
mouth wide open. There wasn't enough air. His chest ached, and in his head
each heartbeat throbbed like an echo. The sweat dripping from his forehead
made his eyes smart. And before him was still the long, steep descent. And
the empty-bellied wife waiting at home. Ugh, prepared the samovar . . .
Trying to please him. He had a sudden, violent desire to take a running start
and kick that samovar to the devil, then throw himself upon his wife and
beat and beat her till she started bleeding, till she dropped dead. He gloated,
imagining her screams, her curses against fate. "Let her," he thought. "Let
her scream. If I suffer, why shouldn't she?"

Momun broke in on his thoughts.

"Oh, how could I have forgotten, my son!" He hurried over to Orozkul.

"I must go to the school, to pick up the child. Classes are over."

"And what about it?" Orozkul asked with deliberate calm.

 "Don't be angry, my son. Let us leave the log here and go down. You'll
have dinner at home, and I will ride down to the school. I'll bring the boy,
then we'll come back and get the log."

"How long did it take you to think this up, old man?" Orozkul taunted
him.

"The child will cry."

"So what?" Orozkul exploded. At last he had a pretext for loosing his
full rage against the old man. All day he had looked for something to pick
on, and now Momun himself provided it. "He'll cry, so we must leave our
work? In the morning you nagged-1 have to take him to school.' All right,
you did. And now 'I have to take him from school.' And what do you think I
am? Are we playing games here, or what?"

"Don't, my son," begged Momun. "Not today. It doesn't matter about

me, but the boy will wait, he'll cry—on such a day . . .

"What kind of day? What makes it so special?"

"The deer are back. Why, then, on such a day . . ."

Orozkul stared at him. For a moment he was speechless. He had

already forgotten the deer who had flashed by—quick, leaping shadows—
while he had rolled down over thorny bushes, his soul in his heels with
terror. At any second he could have been flattened by the log.

"What do you take me for?" he snarled, breathing into the old man's
face. "A pity you've no beard, or I would give you such a shaking you
wouldn't think that others have less sense than you. What the devil do I care
about your deer? Don't try your tricks with me. Get down to the log. And
don't you dare to bother me about anything until we get it across the river.
It's none of my business who goes to school, or who is crying. That's
enough. Come on. . . ."

As always, Momun obeyed. He realized that he would not break away

from Orozkul until the log was delivered, and he worked with silent
desperation. He never uttered another word, although his heart was crying
out. His grandson waited for him near the school. All the other children
would be gone, and he alone, his orphaned grandson, would be looking
down the road, waiting for his grandfather.

The old man saw in his mind the children bursting out of the
schoolhouse all together and scattering to their homes, hungry after their
classes. Already in the street they smelled the food prepared for them, and
eagerly, excitedly, they ran past the open windows, each to his own home.
Their mothers were waiting for them. Each with a smile that made their
heads turn round. Life might be hard or easy for the mother, but she would
always have a smile ready for her child. And even if she scolded, "Are your
hands clean? Go wash your hands!" her eyes would smile in welcome all
the same.

Since he had started school, the boy's hands were always smeared with
ink. This actually pleased Momun: it meant the boy was doing his work.
And now the child was standing on the road, his hands ink-stained, holding
his beloved schoolbag. He was probably tired of waiting, and looked and
listened anxiously for his grandpa to appear over the hilltop on his horse.
Because Momun was always prompt. By the time the boy came out of
school, his grandfather would already be dismounted, waiting for him
nearby. Everybody would go home, and the boy would run to his
grandfather. "There's grandpa," he would say to his schoolbag. "Let's run."
And when he came up to the old man, he'd stop, embarrassed. If no one was
around, he'd fling his arms around his grandfather and press his face to the
old man's stomach, breathing in the familiar smell of his old clothes and dry
summer hay. These past few days Momun had been bringing the hay in
large bundles from across the river. In winter it would be impossible to
reach the hay through the deep snow; the best thing was to bring it over in
the fall. AFter this autumn chore, Momun would go about for a long time
smelling of the slightly acrid hay dust. The boy liked the smell.

The old man would put the boy lip on the horse behind him, and they
would ride home eithef at a slow trot, or at a walk. Sometimes they were
silent, sonietimes they would ex¬change a word or two about something
unimportant. They'd get across the pass between the mountains, and then,
before they knew it, they would come down iiito their own San-Tash valley.

The boy's enormous eagerness for school annoyed grandma. The

moment he awakened, he quickly dressed and rearranged the books and
copybooks in his schoolbag. It an¬gered the old woman that he always 1ept
the schoolbag near him at night.

"Glued to his stinking schoolbag! Why don't you marry it—save us the
bride money . . ."

The boy ignored grandma's wads. Besides, he didn't rightly understand

them. The main thing to him was to get to school on time. He'd run into die
yard and hurry his grandpa. And he would not calm down until the
schoolhouse was in sight.

One day last week they were late, anyway. Momun had gone across
the river mounted on his horse at dawn. He thought he'd bring some hay
over fiirst thing that morning. It would have been all right, but the bundle
got untied and the hay scattered. He had to tie it up t again and reload it on
the horse. Because he had hurried, the bundle got untied a second time right
by the riverbank.

And his grandson was already waiting for him on the other side. He
stood on top of a jagged rock, waving the schoolbag and shouting, calling
him. The old man hurried, and the rope got tangled; he couldn't straighten
it. The boy kept shouting, and Momun saw that he was crying. He left the
hay and the rope, and hastened across the ford to his grandson. But fording
the river is a slow job, the current is strong and swift. In the fall it's not so
bad, but in the summer it may throw the horse, and then you're gone. When
Momun had finally gotten across, the boy was sobbing. He did not look at
his grandfather, but kept repeating, "I'm late, I'm late for school." The old
man bent down, lifted the boy into the saddle, and galloped off. If the
school had been nearer, the boy would have run there himself. But now he
cried all the way, and the old man could not quiet him down. And that was
how he brought him, sobbing, to school. The classes had already started,
and he led the boy right to his teacher.
 Momun apologized and apologized to her, promising that it would not
happen again. But he was shaken most of all because his grandson had cried
so bitterly, because he had suffered so deeply over his lateness. "May God
grant that you always love school so much," the grandfather thought to
himself. And yet, why had the boy cried so uncontrollably? It meant there
was some pain, some unexpressed pain of his own in his soul.

And now, as he was climbing down beside the log, jumping from one
side to another, pushing and guiding it with his pole, Momun kept thinking
about the boy out there.

But Orozkul was in no hurry as he led the horse. In truth, one could not
hurry there. The way was long and steep. It was necessary to move
slantwise. Still, he might have listened to the old man's plea to leave the log
and go back for it later. Ah, thought Momun, if he had strength enough, he'd
lift the log onto his shoulder, step across the river, and throw it down on the
spot where the truck was to be loaded. Here, take your log and do not
bother me again. And then he'd hurry off for his grandson.

But how could he! It was still necessary to get the log down to the
riverbank, over the rocks and gravel, and then drag it across the ford. And
the horse was already at the end of his strength, after climbing up and down
the mountains all that time. They'd be lucky if everything went right, but
what if the log got stuck among the rocks in the water, or the horse
stumbled and fell?

When they entered the river, Grandpa Momun prayed:

"Help us, Horned Mother Deer, keep the log from getting stuck, keep
the horse from stumbling." Barefoot, his boots slung over his shoulder, his
trousers rolled up over his knees, Momun struggled, with the pole in his
hands, to keep up with the floating log. It was dragged slantwise, against
the current. The water was as cold as it was clear. Autumn water.

The old man endured silently: never mind, his feet wouldn't drop off.
If only they could get across without delay. And yet the log got stuck, as if
in spite. It caught on the stones in the most difficult, rocky spot. In such
cases, the horse must be allowed to rest awhile, then urged to move. A
strong, sudden pull might dislodge the log from the rocks.

But Orozkul, sitting astride the horse, mercilessly whipped the

weakened, exhausted animal. The horse slipped, stumbled, dropped on his
hind legs, but the log would not budge. The old man's feet were numb,
everything began to turn daA before his eyes, he was overcome with
dizziness. The cliff; the woods above it, the clouds in the sky careened,
stood sideways, tumb ed into the river, were carried off by the swift current,
rettrned. Momun felt faint. The damned log—if only it had been dry! Dry
wood floats by itself, all you need to do is keep it from rushing off
downstream. But this one was freshly cut, and now try and drag it across
the river. Who ever does such things? No wonder they had all this trouble.
An evil deed can only have an evil end. Orozkul did not dare to let the log
lie in the woods until it dried; one never knew when an inspector might
drop in. Then he would send off a report that valuable trees were being cut
down in the forest preserve. And so, the moment a tree was cut, it had to be
removed out of sight.

Orozkul hammered at the horse with his heels, beat him on the head
with the lash, and swore, and cursed at the old man, as though the whole
thing was Momun's fault. And the log refused to yield, but sank still deeper
among the rocks. And now the old man lost his patience. For the first time
in his life he raised his voice in anger.

"Get off the horse!" He went to Orozkul and resolutely pulled him
from the saddle. "Don't you see the beast can't pull? Get off, right now!"

Stunned with surprise, Orozkul obeyed silently. He jumped into the

water straight from the saddle, in his boots. From this moment on he
seemed to have turned deaf and stupid, to have been shocked out of his
usual self.

"Come on! Bear down! Together now!" At Momun's command, they

bore down on the pole, prying up the log, trying to free it from the rocks.

But what a clever animal a horse is! He gave a sharp tug iust at that
moment, and, stumbling, slipping on the rocks, pulled the traces as taut as a
bowstring. But, after shifting an inch, the log slipped, and was held fast in
the rocks again. The horse made another effort, and this time he lost his
footing and fell into the water, struggling there and tangling up his harness.

"Get to the horse! Get him up!" Momun pushed Orozkul.

Together, after much difficulty, they managed to get the horse back on
his feet. The animal shivered with the cold and was barely able to stand.

"Unharness him!"

"What for?"

"Unharness him, I say. Take off the traces."

And again Orozkul obeyed in silence. When the harness was removed,
Momun took the horse by the bridle.

"Come on, now," he said. We shall return later. Let the horse rest."

"Wait, now, just you wait!" Orozkul seized the bridle from the old
man's hands. He seemed to have awakened, to have recovered himself.
"Who d'you think you're talking to? You won't go anywhere. We'll get the
log across right now. People are coming for it in the evening. Harness the
horse, and no more talk from you, you hear?"

Momun turned without a word and hobbled on his cold- stiffened feet
toward the bank.

"Where are you going, old man? Where are you going, I say?"

"Where? Where? To the school. My grandson's been waiting there

since noon."

"Come back, now! Come back!"

The old man did not listen. Orozkul left the horse in tl; water and
caught up with Momun at the very edge of 6 river, on tht pebbled slope. He
caught the old man by 6 shoulder an4 twisted him around.
 They stood face to face.

With a short swing of his arm, Orozkul tore Momuis cheap, worn
boots from the old man's shoulder and smashd him on the lead and face
with them.

"Get back to work! You!" Orozkul ordered hoarse', throwing away the
boots.

The old man walked up to the boots, lifted them frcn the wet sant and
straightened up. There was blood on ts lips.

"Swine" said Momun, spitting out the blood, and slu g the boots Over
his shoulders.

This was said by Obliging Momun, who had never cci-tradicted

an'zone. It was said by a miserable little old mai, blue with cold, with a pair
of shabby boots over his should(rs and blood oh his lips.

"Corrie on, I say!"

Orozkul dragged him back to the river, but Momun broke away knd
silently walked off without a backward lock,

"Watch out, now, old fool! I'll remember this!" Orozkil shouted after
him, shaking his fist.

The old man still did not look back. Coming out on tae path near the
"resting camel," he sat down, put on his boots, and rapidly walked home.
Stopping nowhere, he went reedy to th stable. He led out the gray horse,
Alabath, Orozkul's own riding horse whom no one was allowed to mount,
who was never harnessed to a cart in order not to spoil his style. As though
rushing to a fire, Momun rode cutof the yard on him without saddle or
stirrups. And when he galloped past the windows, past the still smoking
samovar, the women—Momun's old wife, his daughter Bekey, and young
Guldzhamal—immediately understood that something had happened to the
old man. He had never mounted Ala- bash and never galloped across the
yard at such breakneck speed. They did not know as yet that this was the
revolt of Obliging Momun. And they did not know what it would cost him
in his old age.

Meantime, Orozkul was returning from the ford, leading the

unharnessed horse by the bridle. The horse limped on one of his front legs.
The women watched silently as Orozkul approached the yard. They were
still unaware of what was going on in his mind and heart, what he was
bringing them that day, what trouble, what terror.

In wet, sloshing boots and wet trousers, he came up to them with

heavy steps and threw them a dark look from under his brow. His wife,
Bekey, cried anxiously:

"What is the matter with you, Orozkul? What happened? You're all
wet. Was the log carried off?"

"No." Orozkul waved her off. "Here"—he gave the reins to

Guldzhamal—"take the horse to the stable." Then he turned toward his
house. "Come inside," he said to his wife. The old woman wanted to go
with them, but Orozkul did not allow her on the threshold.

"Go your way, old woman. There's nothing for you here. Get back to
your house and stay away."

"What are you saying?" Grandma took offense. "What's all this about?
And what about our old man? What happened?"

"Ask him," said Orozkul.

In the house, Bekey pulled off her husband's wet clothes, gave him a
warm robe, brought in the samovar, and began to pour him some tea.

"No." Orozkul rejected it with a wave of the hand. "Give me a drink."

His wife took out a bottle of vodka and poured it into a glass.

"Fill it up," said Orozkul. He drank it in a single breath, wrapped

himself in his robe, and, lying down on the rug, said to his wife: "You are
no wife to me, and I am not your husband. Get out, and never set foot in my
house again. Go, before it's too late."

Bekey sighed, sat down on the bed, and, swallowing her tears, as
always, said quietly:

"Again?"

"Again what?" bellowed Orozkul. "Get out!"

Bekey jumped out of the house and, as always, wrung her hands and
screamed for the whole yard to hear:

"Why was I ever born into this world, why must I suffer this misery?"

And, in the meantime, old Momun was galloping on Alabash toward

his grandson. Alabash was a fast horse. Still, Momun was more than two
hours late. He met the boy on the road. The teacher herself was leading him
home. The same teacher, with the wind-roughened hands, in the same,
shabby coat she had worn for the past five years. The weary woman looked
glum. The boy, who had wept for a long time, walked next to her, swollen
eyed, with his schoolbag in his hands, pathetic and humbled. The teacher
gave old Momun a sharp scolding. He dismounted and stood before her
with bowed head.

"Don't bring the child to school if you won't come in time to pick him
up. Don't count on me, I have four of my

own.,,

Momun apologized again. Again he promised it would not happen

anymore.

The teacher went back to Dzhelesai, and the grandfather turned

homeward with his grandson.

The boy was silent, sitting on the horse before his grandfather. And the
old man did not know what to say to him. "You're very hungry?" he asked.
 "No, the teacher gave me some bread."

"And why are you so quiet?"

The boy said nothing.

"You take offense too easily," Momun said with a guilty smile. He took
off the boy's cap, kissed him on the head, and replaced the cap.

The boy did not turn around.

They rode, both of them depressed and silent. Momun restrained

Alabash, keeping a strong hand on the reins. He did not want to let the boy
be shaken up on the unsaddled horse. Besides, there seemed no reason to
hurry anymore.

The horse quickly understood what was expected of him and moved at
a light trot, snorting now and then, his hooves tapping on the road. A fine
horse, a horse to ride by oneself, singing quietly, just to oneself. There were
many things a man could sing to himself. About dreams that never came to
pass, about lost years, about the days when one was still in love . . . A man
likes to sigh for the days when something was left behind, something
forever unattainable. And yet, he never even knows rightly what this
something was. But sometimes he wants to think about it, to feel his own
self.

A good horse, a good companion . . .

And old Momun was thinking as he looked at his grandson's cropped

head, his thin neck and wide ears, that all he had left of his whole unlucky
life, of all his toil, all his sorrows, was this child, this still helpless little
being. If he could only live long enough to put him on his feet. The boy
would have a hard time if he was left alone. No bigger than a budding ear of
corn, but already with a character of his own. He ought to be simpler, more
easily affectionate. . . . Men like Orozkul would hate him and tear into him
like wolves into a cornered deer.
 Suddenly Momun remembered the deer that flashed by like swift
shadows, the deer that caused him to cry out in joy and wonder.

"Do you know, my son," Momun said, "the deer have come to us."

The boy glanced quickly over his shoulder.

"Is it true?"

"It's true. I saw them myself. Three head."

"Where did they come from?"

"From over the pass, I think. There is a forest preserve there, too. The
fall is still as warm as summer—the pass is open. And so they came to visit
us."

"Will they stay with us?"

"If they like it here, they will. If no one touches them, they'll stay.
There's food enough for them—even for a thousand. In old times, when the
Horned Mother Deer was here, there were countless numbers of them
around here."

Feeling that the boy was relaxing at the news, that he was beginning to
forget his grief, the old man began to talk again about old times, about the
Horned Mother Deer. And, carried away by his own tale, he thought: "How
easy it is to feel happy and bring happiness to others! If we could always
live like this." Yes, just as they were living at that moment. But life was not
like that. Right next to joy, there was misfortune, watching out for you
constantly, breaking into your life, following you always, eternal,
inescapable. Even at that hour, when they were so happy, anxiety nagged at
the old man's heart: What about Orozkul? What punishment was he
preparing for the old man who had dared to disobey him? For Orozkul
would not ignore it, or he would not be Orozkul.

And so, in order not to think about the imminent disaster awaiting his
daughter and himself, Momun spoke to his grandson about the deer, about
their nobility and beauty and swiftness with such self-oblivious joy as
though this could somehow avert the inevitable.

And the boy was happy. He never suspected what awaited him at
home. His eyes and ears were burning. Could it be true that the deer had
come back? So everything his grandfather had told him was true. Grandpa
was saying that the Horned Mother Deer forgave men's crimes against her
and permitted her children to return to the Issyk-Kul Mountains. He was
saying that three deer had come back to see how it was here, and if they
liked it, all deer would return to their homeland.

"Ata," the boy interrupted his grandfather. "Perhaps it is the Horned

Mother Deer herself who came here? Perhaps she wants to see how it is
here, and then call her children?"

"It could be so," Momun said uncertainly. He hesitated, wondering:

Had he not gone too far? Had the boy put too much faith in his words? But
Momun did not try to dispel the boy's belief. It would have been too late
now, anyway.

"Who knows." He shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps. Perhaps it was the

Horned Mother Deer herself. Who knows . . ."

"We can find out," cried the boy. "Let's go to the place where you saw
the deer. I want to see them too."

But they don't stay in one place."

"We'll follow in their tracks. We'll follow and follow for a long time.
And as soon as we catch sight of them we'll turn back. And then they will
believe that people won't harm them."

"You funny child." The grandfather smiled. "Let's get home first, then
we'll see."

They were already approaching the post along the path that ran behind
the houses. A house from the back is just like a man from the back. None of
the three houses gave any sign of what was going on inside. The yard was
also empty and quiet. Momun's heart shrank with foreboding. What could
have happened? Had Orozkul beaten his unhappy daughter? Had he drunk
himself into a stupor? Why was it so quiet? Why was nobody out in the
yard at this hour? "If everything's all right," thought Momun, "that blasted
log will have to be dragged out of the river. To the devil with Orozkul, it's
best to humor him—do what he wants, and forget it. You can't prove to an
ass that he is an ass."

Momun rode over to the stable.

"Get down. We're home," he said to his grandson, trying to conceal his
anxiety. But when the boy ran toward the house with his schoolbag, Momun
stopped him: "Wait, we'll go together."

He put Alabash in the stable, took the boy by the hand, and walked
toward the house.

"Now listen," the grandfather said to his grandson, "if they scold me,
don't be frightened, don't pay attention to their words. It doesn't concern
you. Your business is to go to school."

But nothing of the kind happened. When they came in, grandma
merely gave Momun a long, disapproving look, compressed her lips, and
resumed her sewing. Grandpa said nothing either. Frowning and tense, he
stood a while in the middle of the room, then he took a large bowl of
noodles from the stove, brought spoons and bread, and sat down with his
grandson to a late supper.

They ate silently. Grandma did not even look in their direction. Anger
was frozen on her flabby brown face. The boy realized that something
terrible had happened. But the old people remained silent.

Such dense fear and disquiet settled over the boy that he could barely
eat. There is nothing worse than silence at the dinner table, when people are
absorbed in their own anger. "Maybe it's our fault," the boy said mentally to
his schoolbag, which lay on the windowsill. The boy's heart rolled down to
the floor, slipped across the room, climbed to the windowsill, nearer to the
schoolbag, and whispered to it:
 "You don't know anything about it? Why is grandpa so sad? What did
he do? And why was he late today? Why did he come on Alabash, and
without a saddle? This never happened before. Could he have been delayed
because he saw the deer in the woods? And suppose there are no deer at all?

Suppose it isn't true? What then? Why did he tell me about it? The
Horned Mother Deer will be very angry if he lied to us . . .

After supper, Grandpa Momun said quietly to the boy: "Go out into the
yard, I have some business to attend to. You'll help me. I'll be out in a
moment."

The boy obediently left. And as soon as he closed the door, grandma's
voice rose behind him:

"Where to?"

"To get the log. It got stuck in the river," said Momun.

"Ah, thought better of it, eh?" grandma screamed. "Came to your

senses? Go look at your daughter. Guldzhamal took her into her house.
Who needs her now, your barren fool? Go, let her tell you who she is now.
Her husband turned her out like a mangy dog."

"Well, he did, so he did," Momun said bitterly.

"Look at him! And who are you? Your daughters are no good, so you
think you'll raise your grandson to be an important official! That brat! If it
was somebody to risk your neck for, at least. And it is Alabash, no less, that
you must ride. Just look at you! It's time you knew your place, time you
remembered the kind of man you're bucking. . . . He'll twist your neck like a
chicken's. Just wait! Since when did you begin to fly in people's faces?
Great hero! And don't you even think of bringing your daughter here, I
wouldn't let her on the doorstep . . ."

The boy walked across the yard with a bowed head. Grandma's
screams continued in the house, then the door flew open, and Momun
rushed out. The old man went to Seidakhmat's house, but Guldzhamal met
him at the threshold.

"It's better if you don't go in now. Later," she said to Momun. He

stopped in confusion. "She's crying, he beat her up," whispered
Guldzhamal. "He says they will not live to¬gether anymore. She's cursing
you. She says it's all your fault."

Momun was silent. What could he say? Now even his own daughter
would not see him.

"And Orozkul is drinking in there. He's like a wild beast," Guldzhamal

spoke in a whisper.

They stood in silence, thinking. Guldzhamal sighed sympathetically:

"If only Seidakhmat would come soon. He said he would return today.
You'd bring the log over together, and be rid of that, at least."

"It's not the log so much. That's not the worst of it." Momun shook his
head. He stood, thinking, then he noticed his grandson at his side. "Go and
play awhile," he said to the boy.

The boy walked away. He went into the barn, took the binoculars
hidden there, and dusted them. "We're in bad trouble," he told them sadly. "I
think it's my fault, and the schoolbag's. If there was another school nearby,
I'd run off with the schoolbag to study there—but so that nobody would
know. The only one I would be sorry for is grandpa, he'd search for me.
And you, binoculars, with whom would you be looking at the white ship?
You think I couldn't turn into a fish? You'll see. I'll swim to the white ship . .
."

The boy hid behind the haystack and began to look around him
through the binoculars. But he looked joylessly and briefly. At other times
he could not get enough of it—the mountains, covered with autumn woods.
White snow above, red flame below.
 The boy put the binoculars back in their usual place. As he came out of
the barn, he saw his grandfather leading the harnessed horse across the
yard. He was going to the ford. The boy wanted to run to him, but he was
stopped by Orozkul's shout. Orozkul jumped out of the house in his
undershirt, his coat over his shoulders. His face was purple, like a cow's
swollen udder.

"Hey, you!" he shouted threateningly to Momun. "Where are you

taking the horse? Come on, now, put him back. We'll get the log without
you. Don't you dare touch it. You're nobody here from now on. You're fired
from the job. Get out of here—go anywhere you wish."

The old man smiled bitterly and led the horse back to the stable. He
suddenly became very old and very small. He walked, shuffling his feet,
without looking at anyone.

The boy gasped. His breath stopped with anger and grief for his
grandfather, for his humiliation. To hide his tears, he ran away down the
path by the river. The path blurred before him, disappeared, then reappeared
under his feet. The boy ran, crying. Here were his favorite boulders, the
"tank," the ((wolf," the "saddle," the "resting camel." He said nothing to
them. They understood nothing, they just lay and lay there. He merely put
his arms around the resting camel's hump and, pressing himself to the rusty
granite, sobbed .aloud, bitterly and inconsolably. He cried for a long time,
gradually quieting down.

At last he raised his head, wiped his eyes, looked up, and turned numb.

Right before him, on the opposite bank, three deer stood by the water.
Real deer. Real, living deer. They had come down to drink. It seemed they
had been drinking for some time and had enough now. Then one of them,
the one with the largest, heavy horns, lowered his head to the water again
and, sipping slowly, seemed to examine his horns in the inlet, as in a mirror.
He was reddish brown, with a powerful chest. When he tossed his head up,
drops fell into the water from his lighter-colored, hairy lip. Faintly stirring
his ears, the great horned animal gave the boy a close, attentive look.
 But the one who looked longest at the boy was the white, high-flanked
doe with a crown of slender, branching horns on her head. Her horns were
slightly smaller than the male's, but very beautiful. She was exactly like the
Horned Mother Deer. Her eyes were enormous, clear, and liquid. And she
was as stately as a fine mare that foals every year. The Horned Mother Deer
looked at him intently, calmly, as if trying to remember where she had seen
this roundheaded, wide-eared boy before. Her eyes gleamed moistly,
glowing from the distance. A whiff of steamy breath rose from her nostrils.
Next to her, with his back to the boy, a hornless fawn was munch¬ing at
some willow branches. He did not care about anything. He was well fed,
strong, and merry. Abandoning the branches, he made a sudden leap,
brushed the doe with his shoulder, and, after a few more playful leaps,
began to fondle his mother. He rubbed his hornless head against the Horned
Mother Deer's side. And she still looked and looked at the boy.

Holding his breath, the boy came out from behind the rock and
walked, as though dreaming. His arms stretched before him, he walked to
the bank, to the very edge of the water. The deer were not the least bit
frightened. They looked calmly at him from the opposite bank.

Between them ran the swift, transparent, greenish river, boiling up as it

rolled across the underwater rocks. And if it were not for the river, it
seemed to the boy that he could walk up and touch the deer. They stood on
the even, clean, pebbled shore. And behind them, where the strip of pebbles
ended, rose the flaming wall of autumn woods. Still higher, was the bare,
clay ledge, and over it the golden and orange birches and aspens. And over
all of this, the deep dense forest and white snow on the craggy summits.

The boy closed his eyes and opened them again. The picture before
him did not change. The legendary deer still stood on the clean pebbled
shore before the fiery-leaved thickets.

But now they turned and walked in single file across the bank and into
the woods. First the large male, then the hornless fawn, and last the Horned
Mother Deer. She glanced back over her shoulder at the boy again. The deer
entered the thicket and walked among the shrubs. The scarlet branches
waved over them, and red leaves dropped upon their smooth, strong backs.
 They went up the path and rose to the clay ledge. Here they stopped
again. And once more the boy thought that the deer looked at him. The
male stretched his neck, threw back his horns, and sang out like a trumpet,
"Ba-o, ba-o!" His voice rolled across the gap and the river in a long echo:
"Aa-o, aa-o!"

And it was only then that the boy recalled himself. He dashed back
home down the familiar path. He ran as fast as his breath allowed, raced
across the yard, threw open the door with a bang, and shouted, gasping,
from the threshold:

"Ata! The deer! The deer have come! They're here!"

Grandpa Momun glanced at him from the corner, where he sat, quiet
and sorrowful, and did not answer, as if he had not understood his
grandson's words.

"All right, stop shouting!" grandma snapped at him. "They're here, so

they're here. That's all we have to think about!"

The boy went out quietly. There was no one in the yard. The autumn
sun was already sinking behind Outlook Mountain, behind the row of bare,
twilit crags. The dense, no longer warm sun glowed red upon the cooling,
desolate mountains, and the chill glow scattered in wavering glints over the
summits of the autumn ranges. The evening dusk was blanketing the woods.

A wind blew down from the snows. The boy shivered.

 6
He shivered even when he got into bed. For a long time he could not
fall asleep. Night was already black outside. His head ached. But the boy
was silent. And no one knew he had fallen ill. He was forgotten.

And how could they help forgetting him?

His grandfather had lost his head altogether. He did not know what to
do with himself. He would go outside, then come back; he would sit down,
huddled, sighing deeply, then he'd get up and go out somewhere again.
Grandma nagged at him angrily, but she too wandered back and forth over
the house, stepped out into the yard, came back without apparent reason.
From the yard came muffled, broken voices, hurried steps, curses. It seemed
that Orozkul was cursing again. Somebody cried, sobbing.

The boy lay quietly, feeling more and more exhausted from all those
voices and steps, from all that was happening in the house and yard.

He closed his eyes and, trying to console himself for his loneliness, for
his sense of being utterly abandoned, turned his thoughts back to what had
happened earlier, to what he longed to see. He stood on the bank of a wide
river. The water flowed so fast that he could not keep his eyes on it long, it
made him dizzy. And from the other bank the deer were looking at him. All
three of them—the same he had seen that evening. And everything was
repeated. The same drops fell from the wet lip of the horned buck when he
raised his head from the water. And the Horned Mother Deer went on
look¬ing attentively at the boy with her kind, understanding eyes. And her
eyes were enormous, dark, and moist. The boy was astonished to hear the
Horned Mother Deer sigh like a human being. Deeply and sorrowfully, like
his grandfather. Then they walked away through the underbrush. The red
branches swayed over them, and scarlet leaves dropped on their smooth,
strong backs. They rose to the ledge over the sheer drop. They stopped. The
large male stretched his neck and, throwing back his horns, sang out like a
trumpet: "Ba-o, ba-o!" The boy smiled to himself, remembering how the
voice of the big deer rolled over the river in a long echo. After that the deer
vanished in the woods. But the boy did not want to part with them, and he
began to invent the things he wanted to happen.

Again the wide, fast river raced before him. His head reeled from the
rapid current. He leaped and flew across the river. Smoothly and softly he
landed not far from the deer, who still stood on the pebbled bank. The
Horned Mother Deer called him and asked:

"Whose boy are you?"

The boy was silent; he was ashamed to tell her whose boy he was.

"My grandpa and I, we love you very much, Horned Mother Deer.
We've waited for you for a long time," he said.

"I know you. And I know your grandfather. He is a good man," said
the Horned Mother Deer.

The boy felt happy, but he did not know how to thank her.

"Would you like to see me turn into a fish and swim down the river to
Issyk-Kul and the white ship?" he asked her suddenly.

He knew how to do that. But the Horned Mother Deer did not answer.
Then the boy began to undress and, shivering a little, as he did in summer,
climbed down into the water, holding on to a willow branch. But the water,
surprisingly, was not cold. It was hot, stifling. He swam underwater with
open eyes, and myriads of golden grains of sand and tiny pebbles whirled
about him in a buzzing swarm. He began to suffocate, but the hot current
still dragged and dragged him on.

"Help me, Horned Mother Deer, help me. I am also your son, Horned
Mother Deer!" he shouted loudly.

The Horned Mother Deer followed him along the bank. She ran so fast
that the wind whistled in her horns.
 The boy threw off the blanket and felt easier at once. He was dripping
with perspiration. Then, remembering that in such cases grandpa always
covered him more warmly, the boy wrapped the blanket round himself
again. There was no one in the house. The wick in the lamp had burned
down and the light was very dim. The boy wanted to get up and get a drink,
but again sharp voices came from the yard. Someone shouted at someone
else, somebody was crying, somebody was trying to console him. There
were sounds of a scuffle and stamping feet. Then two pairs of feet were
heard outside the window, as if one person was dragging another, gasping
and groaning. The door flew open, and grandma, furious and breathing
hard, pushed Grandfather Momun into the house. The boy had never seen
his grandfather in such a state. His mind seemed to be gone. His eyes
wandered over the room without sense or recognition. Grandma shoved him
in the chest and forced him to sit down:

"Sit down, sit down, old fool! And keep out of other people's business.
Is it the first time they're fighting? If you want things to settle down, sit
quiet and stay out of it. Do as I tell you. Do you hear? Or he will ruin us, he
will destroy us altogether. And where are we to go in our old age? Where?"
And with these words grandma banged the door and ran off somewhere
again.

The house was quiet once more. The only sound was grandfather's
hoarse, broken breathing. He sat on the bench by the stove, clutching his
head with trembling hands. And suddenly the old man dropped on his knees
and raised his hands with a moan, addressing heaven knows whom:

"Take me, take me, old wretch that I am! Only give her a child! I've no
more strength to see her suffer. Just one child, take pity on us . . ."

Weeping and swaying, the old man rose and, groping along the wall,
he found the door. He stepped out, closed the door behind him, and there,
behind the door, he broke into choking sobs, covering his mouth with his
hand.

The boy was sick. He shivered again. Now he was burning, now cold.
He wanted to get up and go to his grandfather. But his hands and feet
refused to obey him, his head seemed to be splitting with sharp pain. And
the old man cried behind the door, and the drunken Orozkul ranted again in
the yard, and Aunt Bekey screamed desperately, and the voices of grandma
and Guldzhamal were pleading with them both, trying to quiet them down.

The boy escaped from them into his imagined world.

Again he was on the bank of the swift river, and on the other bank, on
the pebbles, stood the same deer. And the boy broke into a prayer: "Horned
Mother Deer, bring Aunt Bekey a cradle in your horns. I beg you, I beg you,
bring them a beshik. Let them have a child." And he ran over the water
toward the Horned Mother Deer. The water did not yield under his feet, but
he could not get any nearer to the other bank, as though he were running on
the same spot. And all the time he prayed and pleaded with the Horned
Mother Deer: "Bring them a cradle on your horns. Make grandpa stop
crying. Make Uncle Orozkul stop beating Aunt Bekey. Make them have a
child. I will love everybody, I will even love Uncle Orozkul, but give him a
child. Bring them a cradle in your horns . . ."

It seemed to the boy that he could hear the tinkling of a bell in the
distance. It tinkled more and more loudly. It was the Horned Mother Deer
running over the mountains, carrying a baby's cradle in her horns—a
birchwood cradle with a tinkle bell. The cradle bell rang and rang. The
Horned Mother Deer was in a hurry. The ringing came nearer and nearer.

But what was that? The throbbing of a distant motor joined the sound
of the bell. A truck was going by. The hum of the motor grew louder and
stronger, and the bell grew fainter; it tinkled with long breaks, then was lost
altogether in the noise of the truck.

The boy heard a heavy truck stop near the yard, with the clanking of
iron against iron. The dog ran out of the yard barking. For a moment the
headlights flashed in the window, then went out at once. The motor stopped.
The cabin door slammed shut. The new arrivals—there seemed to be three
of them—passed the window under which the boy was lying, talking among
themselves.

"Seidakhmat is home," Guldzhamal cried out joyfully, and the boy

heard her run to meet her husband. "We thought you'd never come!"
 "Good evening," unfamiliar voices answered her. "How is everything
here?" asked Seidakhmat.

"Oh, all right. As usual. Why so late?"

"I'm lucky to be here at all. I went to the Soviet farm and started
waiting for a car going this way. At least as far as Dzhelesai. And then they
turned up—coming for logs," Seidakhmat was saying. "It's dark in the
canyon. You know what the road's like .

"And where is Orozkul? At home?" one of the newcomers asked.

"He's home," Guldzhamal answered uncertainly. "He's not too well.

But don't worry. You can spend the night with us, there's room enough."

They started across the yard, but halted after a few steps.

"Good evening, aksakal. Good evening, baibiche."

The visitors were greeting Grandpa Momun and grandma. So they

stopped quarreling, they were ashamed to carry on before strangers, the boy
thought. They met the guests in the yard, properly, as custom demanded.
Perhaps Orozkul would, too? If only he wouldn't disgrace himself and the
others.

The boy calmed down a little. He felt a little better now. His head did
not ache as badly. He even thought of getting up and taking a look at the
truck—was it on four wheels, or six? New, or old? And what kind of trailer
did it have? Once, just last spring, they even had an army truck come into
the yard—on high wheels and with a pug nose, as though someone had
chopped off its front end. The young soldier at the wheel allowed the boy to
sit for a while in the cabin. That was something! And an officer with golden
shoulder straps had gone with Orozkul into the forest. The boy had
wondered why—nothing like that had ever happened before.

"Are you looking for a spy?" the boy asked the soldier. The latter
grinned:
 "Yes, for a spy."

"We've never had a single spy yet," the boy had told him regretfully.

The soldier laughed.

"What do you want a spy for?"

"I'd chase him and catch him."

"Wow, what a hero! Kind of young, though. Wait till you grow up a
bit."

And, while the officer with the golden shoulder straps walked in the
woods with Orozkul, the boy and the driver had a good talk.

"I love all cars and all drivers," said the boy.

"Why?" asked the soldier.

"Cars are fine, they're strong and fast. And they smell of gasoline. And
the drivers are all young, and all of them are the children of the Horned
Mother Deer."

"What? Whose children?" The soldier didn't understand. "What horned

mother?"

"Don't you know?"

"No. Never heard such wonders."

"And who are you?"

"I'm from Karaganda, a Kazakh. I went to a mining school."

"No, I mean, whose are you?"

“My father's and my mother's."

 And whose are they?"

"Their own mothers' and fathers'."

"And they?"

"Wait a moment, you can go on without end that way." "Well, I am the
son of the sons of the Horned Mother Deer."

Who told you that?"

"My grandpa."

"I wonder." The soldier shook his head doubtfully.

His interest was caught by this roundheaded, lop-eared boy, the son of
the sons of the Horned Mother Deer. How-ever, he was somewhat
embarrassed himself when it turned out that he not only was ignorant of the
origin of his clan, but did not even know the obligatory seven generations
of his forefathers. All he knew were the names of his father, his grandfather,
and his great-grandfather. And beyond that?

"Weren't you taught to remember the names of seven of your

forebears?" the boy asked.

"No. What for? I don't know them, and I'm doing all right. I live like
everybody else."

"Grandpa says that if people will not remember their fathers, they'll go
bad."

"Who'll go bad? People?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Grandpa says that nobody will then be ashamed of bad deeds, because
his children and his children's children won't remember them."
 "You've quite a grandpa, haven't you!" the soldier said admiringly. "An
interesting grandpa. But he fills your head with all sorts of nonsense. And
you have a big head. . . . And a pair of ears like the antennas on our
polygon. Don't listen to him. We're moving toward Communism, flying into
space, and look what he's teaching you. I'd like to get him into some of our
political courses; we'd educate him—one, two, three. Wait till you grow up
and go to school, then get away from your grandpa. He's an ignorant man,
uncivilized."

"My grandpa is a good man," the boy said. "I'll never leave him."

"Oh, that's just for a while. Later you'll understand."

Now, as he listened to the voices in the yard, the boy recalled that
army truck and how he could not explain to the driver why drivers, at least
those he knew, were the sons of the Horned Mother Deer.

The boy had spoken the truth. He had not invented anything. Last year,
also in the fall, or even a bit later, the Soviet farm trucks had come into the
mountains for hay. They did not pass the forest post, but turned off shortly
before reaching it, where the road divided. They drove along the branch that
led to the Archa hollow and then ran upward to the highland meadow where
the hay had been prepared in summertime, to be taken to the farm in the
fall. The boy had heard the roar of many motors from Outlook Mountain
and ran down to the fork in the road. So many trucks at once! One after
another. A whole column. He counted close to fifteen.

The weather was just about to change. Snow could begin any day; then
it would be good-bye to the hay until next year. There would be no getting
through. Apparently, they had been delayed by other business at the farm,
and when the time grew short, they had decided to send out all the trucks at
once. But their calculations were to be proven wrong.

The boy, however, did not know it then, nor did he care. Wildly
excited, he ran to meet each truck, raced it for a while, then ran to meet the
next one. The trucks were all new, with fine cabins and wide windows. And
in the cabins were young fellows, each better looking than the next. In some
of the cabins there were two fellows, the extra ones coming to help load and
tie the hay. They all seemed to the boy brave, handsome, jolly.

And it was true. The boy was right. The trucks were in good shape,
they rolled easily and fast down the slope past Outlook Mountain, over the
hard smooth road made of crushed stones. The drivers were in a pleasant
mood—the weather was fine, and here, all of a sudden, out of nowhere,
came this lop-eared, roundheaded kid, meeting every truck as though crazed
with joy. How could they help laughing and waving to him, and shaking a
finger jestingly to add to his excitement and fun?

The last truck even stopped for him. The driver, a young fellow in a
soldier's coat, but without shoulder straps, and without a military cap,
looked out of the cabin.

"Hello, what are you doing here, eh?" He winked in a friendly manner.

"Oh, nothing." The boy was suddenly shy.

“Are you old Momun's boy?"

“Yes.”

"I thought so. I'm a Bugan too. In fact, all those fellows are. We're
going up to get the hay. Nowadays, the Bugans don't even know one
another anymore. Scattered all over. . . . Give your grandpa my regards. Tell
him you saw Kulubek, the son of Chotbay. Kulubek. Tell him Kulubek has
come home from the army and now works as a driver at the Soviet farm.
Well, see you." And in parting he gave the boy a military badge, a very
interesting one. Looked like a medal.

The truck roared like a mountain lion and sped away, to catch up with
the rest. And the boy was suddenly overcome with such a strong desire to
go along with that brave, kindly fellow in the army coat, his brother Bugan.
But the road was empty now, and he had to go home. He went back proudly,
and told his grandfather about the meeting. And he pinned the badge to his
chest.
 Toward the evening of that day the San-Tash wind swept down
suddenly from the highest range. It struck like a hurricane. The leaves rose
in a column over the woods, and, swirling higher and higher into the sky,
rushed howling over the mountains. In a moment everything was in a flying
uproar—you could not open your eyes. And all at once—the snow. White
darkness dropped upon the earth, the woods swayed, the river raged. And
snow came down and came down in wild gusts.

The people at the post had somehow managed to get the animals into
the stall, remove a few things from the yard, and bring as much wood as
they could into the houses. After that they could not poke their noses out.

"What could it mean?" Grandpa Momun wondered and worried as he

fired the stove. He kept listening to the howling of the wind and going over
to the window again and again. Outside, the whirling snowy murk grew
thicker and thicker.

"Sit down, will you!" grandma scolded. "It's not the first storm you've
seen. 'What could it mean?'" she mimicked him. "It means that winter's
here."

"All at once, in a single day . . ."

"And why not? If it wants to come, it comes. Expect it to ask your

leave?"

The wind boomed in the chimney. At first it frightened the boy. He

was chilled, too, after helping his grandfather take care of things outside.
But soon the wood burned brightly in the stove, filling the house with
warmth and the smells of heated resin and pine smoke, and the boy calmed
down, warm and comfortable.

They had supper and went to bed. And outside the snow fell and
swirled, the wind raged on.

"It must be very frightening in the woods," the boy thought, listening
to the sounds outside the window. He grew worried when he suddenly heard
muffled voices and cries. Someone was calling out, someone answered. At
first the boy thought he had only imagined it. Who would be coming to the
forest post at such a time? But Grandpa Momun and grandma heard it too.

"People," said grandma.

"Yes," the old man answered uncertainly. Then, anxiously, "Where

from? At this hour?" He hurriedly began to dress.

Grandma began to bustle too. She got up and lit a lamp. The boy was
also anxious and dressed quickly. Meantime, the people had approached the
house. There were many voices and many feet. Their boots creaked on the
snow as the newcomers stamped across the porch and banged on the door:

"Aksakal, open up! We're freezing!"

"Who are you?"

"No strangers—we're from hereabouts."

Momun opened the door. Together with blasts of wind and cold and
snow, the young drivers who had gone that afternoon to Archa to collect
hay for the Soviet farm piled into the room, covered with snow from head
to foot. The boy recognized them at once. And Kulubek, in his army coat,
who had given him the badge. They led one man under the arms; he
moaned and dragged his leg. At once there were alarmed cries from
grandma and Momun:

"Astapralla! [note: “Heaven help us!”] What happened to you?" they

wailed.

"We'll tell you later. There are more of us coming— seven fellows. If
only they don't lose the way. Come on, sit down here. He sprained his foot,"
Kulubek spoke rapidly, seating the moaning young man on the bench by the
stove.

"Where are the others?" Momun began to bustle. "I'll go and bring
them." He turned to the boy: "Run over to Seidakhmat, tell him to come
quick with a lantern, the electric one."
 The boy jumped out of the house and gasped for air. He remembered
that terrifying moment till the end of his life. Some shaggy, cold, whistling
monster seized him by the throat and began to shake him. But he would not
yield. He broke out of its clutches and, shielding his head with his arms, ran
toward Seidakhmat's house. It was no more than twenty or thirty steps
away, but it seemed to him that he ran and ran through the storm like a
legendary hero racing to save his warriors. His heart was filled with courage
and resolution. He felt himself mighty and unconquerable, and, until he
reached Seidakhmat's house, he had managed to perform feats that took
your breath away. He leaped from mountain to mountain across abysses, he
cut down hosts of enemies with his sword, he rescued men from fire and
drowning, he pursued, in a jet bomber with a flying red flag, a shaggy,
black monster escaping from him up and down cliffs and gorges. His jet
flew like a bullet after the monster. The boy riddled him with machine-gun
fire, shouting, "Kill the fascist!" And, wherever he went, the Horned
Mother Deer was there. She was proud of him. When the boy was already
at Seidakhmat's door, the Horned Mother Deer said to him, "And now you
must save my sons, the young drivers!" "I'll save them, Horned Mother
Deer, I swear I will!" the boy cried and hammered on the door.

"Hurry, Uncle Seidakhmat, come save our men!" He shouted so

desperately that both Seidakhmat and Guldzhamal recoiled in alarm.

"Save whom? What happened?"

"Grandpa said to come quick with the flashlight, the electric one, the
drivers from the Soviet farm lost their way."

"Damn fool, why didn't you say so right away?" Seidakhmat swore
and ran for his things.

But the boy was not offended in the least. How was Seidakhmat to
know what feats he had just performed to reach him, what an oath he had
sworn? Nor was he especially upset when he learned that the drivers had
been found by Momun and Seidakhmat right outside the post and brought
safely home. It could easily have been different. Danger is easy when it's
over. Anyway, the rest of the men were found too. Seidakhmat took them to
his house. Even Orozkul had let five men spend the night at his place—he
had had to be awakened, too. The rest had crowded in at Momun's house.

And the storm in the mountains would not subside. The boy kept
running out on the porch, and a moment later he no longer could tell right
from left, above from below. The stormy night swirled and raged. The snow
reached up to his knees.

And it was only now, when all the drivers had been found, when they
thawed out from the cold and fright, that Grandpa Momun questioned them
in detail about the events of that day, although it was obvious that the storm
had caught them on the way. The fellows spoke. The old man and grandma
sighed sympathetically.

"Oh, oh, heaven preserve us," they exclaimed and thanked God,
pressing their hands to their breasts.

"And look at you, fellows, in those light clothes," grandma chided,

pouring them hot tea. "How can you go into the mountains dressed like
that? Just like children. Showing off, trying to look like city folk. And what
if you'd lost the way and had to spend the night outside, heaven forbid?
You'd turn into icicles."

"Who could have known such a thing would happen?" Kulubek

replied. "Why should we dress more warmly? The trucks are heated inside.
You sit there as if it was your own home and turn the wheel. Why, even in
planes—they fly so high these mountains look like molehills from up there
—outside it could be forty below, and inside people go around in
shirtsleeves."

The boy lay on a sheepskin among the drivers. He huddled close to

Kulubek and listened wide eyed to the conversation of the grown-ups. No
one suspected that he was glad the storm had come and made those fellows
seek shelter at the post. Secretly, he hoped that it would go on and on, at
least three days. Let the drivers stay at their house. It was so good, so
interesting with them. And grandpa, it turned out, knew all of them—if not
them, then their fathers and mothers.
 "There," the grandfather said to his grandson with a touch of pride.
"Now you've seen your brothers, the Bugans. You'll know what kind of
kinsmen you have. Look at them! Oh-ho, how tall and handsome our young
ones are getting today. May God send you good health. I remember, in
forty- two, when they brought us to Magnitogorsk to do construction work.
. .”

And grandpa began to tell a story the boy had heard many times
before. The guests smiled understandingly: old men are fond of
reminiscing.

"We're tall all right," said one of the men when grandpa finished his
story. "And yet we bungled the job—we let the truck roll off the road. So
many of us, and we couldn't handle it.''

"How could you?" Momun hastened to reassure him. "Loaded with

hay, and in that blizzard. It happens. God willing, everything will be set
right tomorrow. The main thing is for the wind to quiet down."

The fellows told grandpa how they had come to the upper meadow on
the Archa plateau. There were three huge stacks of mountain hay prepared
for them. They started loading all three at once, piling the trucks higher than
a house, so that a man could not get down afterward except by swinging
down a rope. They loaded truck after truck till even the drivers' cabins were
covered—all you could see was the windshield, the hood, and the wheels.
They wanted to get it all at once, so there would be no need for another trip.
Everybody knew that whatever hay was left behind would have to wait till
next year. The work went fast and smoothly. Each man whose truck was
full, drove it off to the side and returned to help load the rest. They
managed to get nearly all the hay except for about two truckloads. After a
short rest and a smoke, they agreed on who would follow whom, and started
out all together in a column. It was a hard job coming down the mountains.
They had to drive carefully, almost by feel. Hay is a light load, but it's
inconvenient, even dangerous, especially on narrow roads and sharp turns.

They drove without suspecting what awaited them. After getting down
from the Archa plateau, they followed the valley, and by the time they came
out of the narrow pass, it was already evening. And then the blizzard struck.
 "I've never seen it so bad," said Kulubek. "The sweat kept pouring
down my back. All of a sudden everything turned dark, and the wind just
tore the steering wheel out of your hands. It looked as if the truck would
turn over any minute. And the road, you know, is so rough that even in the
daytime it's not safe."

The boy listened with bated breath, without stirring, without taking his
shining eyes off Kulubek. The same wind, the same snow he was talking
about were raging outside. Many of the drivers and loaders were asleep by
now, sprawled on the floor, dressed, boots and all. And everything they had
gone through was being freshly relived by this roundheaded boy with the
thin neck and large ears.

Within a few moments, the road became invisible. The trucks held
close to one another like a row of blind men clinging to the leader, blowing
their horns constantly to keep from going off to the side. The snow tumbled
down like a solid wall, covering the headlights. The windshield wipers were
not fast enough to clear the glass of rime. They had to drive leaning out of
the side windows, but what kind of driving is that? And the snow came and
came without a stop. The wheels began to skid, and the column had to halt
before a steep rise. The motors roared like mad, but it was useless. The
trucks could no longer make it uphill. The drivers jumped out of the cabins
and ran to the front of the column, finding their way from truck to truck by
the hallooing of those ahead. What could be done? It was impossible to
make a fire. Remaining in the cabins meant burning up all the remaining
fuel, and there was hardly enough left as it was to get them to the Soviet
farm. Yet if they didn't heat the cabins they'd freeze to death. The fellows
didn't know what to do. The all-powerful machinery stood powerless.
Somebody suggested piling out the hay from one of the trucks and digging
in. But it was clear that the moment the hay was untied, there wouldn't be a
stalk left: the storm would sweep it off before you blinked an eye.
Meantime, the trucks were being fairly buried under snow, the drifts had
piled up higher than the wheels. The fellows lost their heads completely,
chilled to the bone in the wind.

"Then suddenly I remembered, aksakal," Kulubek told Grandpa

Momun, "how we had met our little brother Bugan on the road on the way
to Archa." He pointed to the boy and stroked him gently on the head. "He
was running by the roadside. I stopped a moment. Sure—to say hello. We
talked awhile. Right? But why aren't you sleeping? It's late."

The boy smiled and nodded. But if anyone could guess how hotly and
violently his heart began to beat with joy and pride. Kulubek himself was
talking about him. The strongest, the bravest, the most handsome of all
these fellows. If he could only grow up to be like him.

And grandpa, too, spoke words of praise, putting more firewood into
the stove:

"That's how he is, our boy. He likes to listen to men talk. Look at him
—all ears!"

"Well, I can't even imagine what made me think of him at that

moment," Kulubek went on. "So I tried to tell the fellows—I had to shout,
the wind blew all the words away. 'Let's try,' I shouted, 'to get to the forest
post, or we shall perish here.' 'But how can we get there?' the fellows
shouted back at me. 'We'll never make it on foot. And we can't leave the
trucks here, either.' So I said, 'Let's try to push them uphill. After that the
road is downhill all the way. All we need is to get to the San-Tash hollow,' I
said, 'and from there on we can get to the foresters' on foot, it's not too far.'
The fellows understood. 'Come on,' they yelled, 'take over the command.'
Well, then . . . We started with the lead truck. 'Get into the cabin,
Osmonaly!' And all of us, as many as we were, set our shoulders to the
truck. It did start moving, but not for long. Our breath gave out. And there
we were—we couldn't let go, either. It seemed to us that we were pushing a
whole mountain uphill, not just a truck. And what was in it —a haystack on
wheels! All I knew was that I yelled with all my strength, 'Come on! Come
on! Come on!' But I couldn't even hear myself. Wind, snow, not a thing to
be seen. The truck howled, screamed like a living creature, struggled with
every ounce of strength. And there we were behind it, our hearts about to
burst to pieces, our heads reeling . . ."

"Ah, ah," Grandpa Momun kept sighing. "Poor fellows —such trouble.
It must have been the Horned Mother Deer herself who stood over you, her
children. It was none but she who saved you. Or else, who knows. . . . You
hear that? It doesn't quiet down outside, whirling and whirling."

The boy's eyes were closing. He tried to force himself to stay awake,
but his eyes kept closing. And, half-asleep, catching fragments of the
conversation, he mingled reality with imagination. It seemed to him that he
himself was there, among the fellows caught in a storm in the mountains.
He saw the steep road rising up the dazzling, snowy mountain. The blizzard
burned his cheeks, slashed at his eyes. They were all pushing up the truck
with the hay, huge as a house. Slowly, slowly they inched up the road. And
now the truck no longer climbed, it was giving up, sliding back. It was
terrifying. The darkness was so dense, the wind so searing. The boy shrank
with terror, afraid the truck would slip and crush them. And at this moment,
the Horned Mother Deer appeared as if from nowhere. She pushed the truck
with her horns, helping them, forcing it up. "Come on! Come on! Come
on!" the boy cried out. And the truck began to move, up and up, until they
reached the top, then it rolled downhill by itself. And they pushed up the
second one, the third, and all the others. And every time the Horned Mother
Deer helped them. Nobody saw her. Nobody knew she was right next to
them. The only one who saw and knew it was the boy. He saw how every
time when the men seemed to be failing, when the going got too difficult
and it seemed their strength would not hold out, she would run over and
push the truck uphill with her horns. "Come on! Come on! Come on!" the
boy would cry. And all the time he was next to Kulubek. Then Kulubek said
to him, "Take the wheel." The boy climbed into the cabin. The truck
hummed and trembled. And the wheel turned in his hands as though of
itself, as easily as the barrel hoop with which he used to play at driving
when he was little. But suddenly the truck began to list, keeling over
sideways. It crashed down and broke to pieces. The boy began to cry aloud.
He felt disgraced. He was ashamed to look at Kulubek.

"What's the matter? What's wrong?" Kulubek woke him.

The boy opened his eyes. And his heart was filled with happiness
because it all had turned out to be a dream. Kulubek lifted him up in his
arms and hugged him.
 "Dreamed something, eh? Got scared? Hey, you, great hero!" He
kissed the boy with his hard, wind-roughened lips. "Come on, I'll put you to
bed. It's time to sleep."

He put the boy down on the floor, on the rug, among the sleeping
drivers, and lay down next to him, pulling him close and covering him with
the flap of his army coat.

Early in the morning the boy was awakened by his grandfather.

"Get up," the old man said quietly. "Dress warmly. You'll help me. Get
up."

The faint morning light was just beginning to filter in through the
window. Everybody in the house was still fast asleep.

"Here, put on your felt boots," said Grandpa Momun. He smelled of

fresh hay—he had already fed the horses. The boy stepped into his felt
boots and they went out into the yard. There was a great deal of snow, but
the wind had died down. Only from time to time some swirls of snow
eddied across the ground.

"It's cold." The boy shivered.

"It's all right. Seems to be clearing," the old man mum-bled. "Just
think of it! Such a blizzard, right off. Oh, well, so long as nobody was
harmed . . ."

They entered the stall, where Momun kept his five sheep. The old man
found the lantern on the post and lit it. The sheep looked up from the corner
and stirred.

"Hold it," said Momun, handing the lantern to the boy. "We'll slaughter
the black yearling. There is a houseful of guests—we must have the meat
ready by the time they wake."

The boy held the lantern. The wind was whistling through the cracks.
It was still cold and dark out in the yard. The old man threw an armful of
clean hay by the entrance. He brought the black yearling to the spot and,
before throwing her on her side and tying her feet, he crouched and thought
awhile.

"Put down the lantern. Sit down, too," he said to the boy. Then he
began to whisper, holding his open palms before him. "Oh, great progenitor,
Horned Mother Deer. I sacrifice this black sheep to you. For saving our
children in the hour of danger. For your white milk, which you fed to our
forebears. For your kind heart and motherly eye. Do not abandon us on
steep passes, on rough streams, on slippery paths. Do not abandon us ever
on our land, we are your children. Amen!"

He passed his hands prayerfully down his face, from forehead to chin.
The boy did the same. And then the old man, threw the sheep, tied its legs,
and drew his old Asian knife from its sheath.

And the boy held the lantern for him.

At last the weather quieted down. The sun looked out, frightened, once
or twice through rifts in the rushing clouds. The effects of the storm were
all around: snowdrifts piled in all directions, broken bushes, young trees
bent double under the weight of snow, old trees toppled by the wind. The
forest across the river stood silent, hushed, somehow oppressed. And the
river itself seemed to have shrunk, its banks, piled high with snow, grown
steeper. Even the noise of the Water was muted.

The sun kept glancing out and disappearing. But nothing troubled or
darkened the boy's heart. The perturbations of the night before were
forgotten, the blizzard was forgotten, and the snow did not disturb him—in
fact, it made things still more interesting. He dashed here and there, white
powder scattering underfoot. He was happy because the house was full of
people, because the fellows were talking loudly and laughing after a good
night's sleep, because they ate the roast mutton with relish.

Meantime, the sun was also steadying itself. It brightened and came
out for longer periods. The clouds were gradually dispersing, and it was
turning warmer. The untimely snow began to settle, especially along the
road and the pathways.

The boy became anxious only when the drivers and loaders prepared to
leave. They went out into the yard, bade their hosts good-bye, and thanked
them for the food and shelter. Grandpa Momun and Seidakhmat were going
with them on horseback. Grandpa took along a large bundle of firewood,
and Seidakhmat a zinc-lined cauldron to heat water for the frozen motors.

They started out from the yard.

"Ata." The boy ran up to his grandfather. "Take me with you, I want to
come too."

"Don't you see I have the wood, and Seidakhmat has the cauldron?
There's nobody to take you. And what do you want there? You'll just tire
yourself out walking in the snow."

The boy was hurt. He sulked. Then Kulubek took him by the hand.

"Come with us," he said. "On the way back you'll go with grandpa."

They walked along the road to the spot where it branched off and ran
to the Archa meadow. There was still a lot of snow. It wasn't as easy as the
boy had thought to keep up with those strong young fellows. He began to
tire.

"Come, get up on my back," Kulubek offered. With an agile

movement, he lightly swung the boy up to his shoulders. And carried him as
easily as if he did it every day.

"You're all right, Kulubek," said the driver who walked next to them.

"Oh, I've carried my brothers and sisters all my life," Kulubek boasted.
"I'm the eldest, and there were six of us. Mother worked in the field, father,
too. By now my sisters have their own kids. I came back from the army,
still unmarried, still without a job. And then my sister, the eldest one, says
'Come and live with us—you're a good nurse."Oh, no,' I said to her, 'I've
had enough. I'll carry my own now . .

And so they walked, talking of this and that. The boy felt happy and
secure riding on Kulubek's strong back.

"If only I had a brother like him," he dreamed to himself. "I'd never be
afraid of anybody. If Orozkul wanted to shout at grandpa or touch anyone,
he'd think twice at just a glance from Kulubek."

The trucks with the hay, left on the road the previous night, were
nearly two kilometers from the fork. Heaped with snow, they looked like
winter stacks in the field. It seemed that nobody would ever move them
from the spot.

But the men built a fire and heated water. They began to crank the first
motor by hand; it came to life and started sneezing. The rest was easier.
Each following truck was started by towing, and so it went till all the
motors worked.

When all the trucks were working, two of them towed up the one that
had toppled over into the gully the previous night. Everybody helped to get
it back onto the road. Even the boy found a spot at the edge and helped the
men. All the time he was afraid that somebody would say, "Run off, stop
tangling underfoot." But nobody said it to him, nobody chased him away.
Perhaps because Kulubek had allowed him to help. And he was the
strongest, they all respected him.

The drivers said good-bye again. The trucks started, first slowly, then
faster. And the caravan went off along the road between the snow-covered
mountains. The sons of the sons of the Horned Mother Deer were gone.
They did not know that in the child's imagination, the Horned Mother Deer
ran invisibly before them. With long, fast leaps she raced before the
column. She protected them from trouble and mishaps on the difficult
journey. From landfalls, avalanches, blizzards, fog, and other misfortunes
the Kirghiz people had endured throughout their many centuries of nomadic
existence. Wasn't this what Grandpa Momun had prayed for to the Horned
Mother Deer when he had sacrificed the black ewe to her at dawn?
 They were gone. And the boy was also going with them. In his mind
he sat in the cabin next to Kulubek. "Uncle Kulubek," he was saying to him,
"the Horned Mother Deer is running ahead of us along the road." "You don't
say!" "It's true. Honest to God. There she is!"

"What are you thinking of?" Grandpa Momun broke into his thoughts.
"Don't stand there. Climb up, time to go home." He bent down from the
horse and lifted the boy into the saddle. "You're not cold?" asked the old
man, wrapping the flaps of his robe closely around his grandson.

In those days the boy was not yet going to school.

And this evening, awakening now and then from heavy sleep, he
thought anxiously: "How will I go to school tomorrow? I'm sick, I feel so
bad . . ." Then he'd drop off again. It seemed to him that he was copying in
his book the words written by the teacher on the blackboard: "At. Ata.
Taka." With these first-grade words he was filling the entire copybook, page
after page. "At. Ata. Taka. At. Ata. Taka."[note: "Horse. Father.
Horseshoe."] He grew tired, the letters jumped before his eyes and he felt
hot, very hot. The boy threw off the coverings. And when he lay uncovered
and froze, all sorts of visions came to him again. Now he swam as a fish in
the chilly river, trying to reach the white ship and never reaching it. Now he
found himself in a snowstorm. In a cold, misty hurricane, trucks filled with
hay were skidding on the steep road up the mountain. The trucks sobbed
like people, and skidded without moving from the spot. The wheels turned
madly, became fiery red. They burned and sent up tongues of flame.
Pressing her horns into the body of the truck, the Horned Mother Deer
pushed the truckload of hay up the mountain. The boy helped her, straining
every muscle. Hot sweat poured down his body. Then suddenly the truck
turned into a child's cradle. The

Horned Mother Deer said to the boy: "Come, let's hurry, we'll take the
cradle to Aunt Bekey and Uncle Orozkul." And they began to run. The boy
fell back. But ahead of him, the cradle bell rang and rang. The boy followed
its call.

He woke when steps were heard on the porch and the door creaked.
Grandpa Momun and grandma returned, seemingly a little less upset. The
arrival of strangers at the post had evidently forced Orozkul and Aunt
Bekey to quiet down. Or, perhaps Orozkul had tired of guzzling and had
finally fallen asleep. There was no longer any shouting or cursing in the
yard.

At midnight the moon rose over the mountains. Its misty disk hung
over the highest icy summit. The mountain, locked in eternal ice, loomed in
the dark, glinting with its ghostly, uneven planes. And all around, the
foothills, the cliffs, the black motionless forests stood utterly hushed, while
the river boiled and tumbled over the rocks below.

The wavering light of the moon flowed in a slanting stream into the
window. The light disturbed the boy. He turned from side to side, closing
his eyes more tightly. He wanted to ask grandma to curtain the window, but
he didn't: grandma was angry at grandpa.

"Fool," she whispered, settling down to sleep. "If you don't know how
to live with people, you'd better hold your tongue and listen to others. Don't
you know you're in his hands? He pays you, even if it's only kopeks. But
you get them every month. And what are you without the pay? Lived all
those years, and learned no sense. . .”

The old man did not answer. Grandma fell silent. Then suddenly she
said aloud:

“If a man's pay is taken from him, he's no longer a man. He's nothing."

Again the old man did not answer.

And the boy could not fall asleep. His head ached, and his thoughts
were confused. He worried about school. He had never missed a single day,
and could not imagine how it would be if he was unable to go to school in
Dzhelesai tomorrow. He also thought that, if Orozkul dismissed grandpa
from his job, grandma would eat him up alive. What would they do then?

Why did people live like that? Why were some good, and some bad?
Why were some happy, and others unhappy? Why were there people who
made everybody afraid of them, and others of whom no one was afraid?
Why did some have children, and others not? Why could some people
refuse to pay others their wages? The most respected people, he thought,
must be those who get the biggest pay. But grandpa got very little, and so
everybody hurt and insulted him. What could he do to make grandpa get
more pay, too? Maybe then Orozkul would also begin to respect him.

These thoughts made the boy's head ache even more. Again he
remembered the deer he had seen the previous evening at the ford. How
were they doing out there at night? They were alone in the cold, stony
mountains, in the pitch black forest. They must be frightened. What if
wolves attacked them? Who would bring Aunt Bekey the magic cradle in
her horns?

He fell into a troubled sleep and, as he drifted off, he prayed to the

Horned Mother Deer to bring the birchwood cradle to Orozkul and Aunt
Bekey. "Let them have children, let them have children," he pleaded with
the Horned Mother Deer. And he heard the distant tinkling of the cradle
bell. The Horned Mother Deer was hurrying with the miraculous cradle in
her horns.
 7
Early in the morning the boy awakened from the touch of a hand.
Grandpa's hand was cold, from the outside. The boy shrank a little.

"Lie, lie there." The old man blew on his hands to warm them and felt
the boy's forehead. Then he put his palm on his chest and stomach. "I'm
afraid you're sick," he said anxiously. "You have a fever. And I was
wondering—why is he lying in bed when it's time for school?"

"I'll get up, right away." The boy raised his head. Everything began to
turn before his eyes, and there was a noise in his ears.

"Don't even think of it." The old man settled the boy back on the
pillow. "Who's going to take you to school when you're sick? Let's see your
tongue."

The boy tried to insist:

"The teacher will scold. She hates it when anybody misses school."

"She won't scold. I'll tell her myself. Come on, show your tongue."

The grandfather carefully examined the boy's tongue and throat. For a
long time he tried to find his pulse. Callused and rough from years of hard
work, the old man's fingers managed miraculously to catch the heartbeats in
the boy's hot, sweaty wrist. Then he said reassuringly:

"God is kind. You've simply caught a chill. The frost got into you.
You'll stay in bed today, and at night I'll rub your feet and chest with hot
mutton fat. You'll sweat it out, and, God willing, you will get up in the
morning strong as a wild ass.”

As he recalled the previous day and Orozkul and all that still awaited
him, Momun's face darkened. He sighed, sitting at his grandson's bed, lost
in thought.
 "Well, what can you do with the man?" he whispered, and turned to the
boy. "When did you get sick? Why didn't you say anything? Was it last
night?"

"Yes, in the evening. When I saw the deer across the river. I ran to tell
you. Then I got very cold."

The old man said in a guilty voice:

"All right. . . . Lie here, I have to go."

He stood up, but the boy stopped him:

"Ate, isn't that the Horned Mother Deer herself? The one that's white
as milk, with eyes like that . . . looking like a human being . . ."

"You little silly." Old Momun smiled cautiously. "Well, let it be your
way. Maybe it is she," he said quietly, "the miraculous Mother Deer, who
knows? I think . . ."

The old man did not finish. Grandma appeared in the door. She hurried
in from the yard, she had already heard something there.

"Go out there, old man," she said from the threshold. Grandpa Momun
drooped at once. He looked shrunken and pitiful. "They want to drag the
log out with the truck," said the old woman. "Go and do everything they tell
you . . . Oh, my God, I haven't boiled the milk yet," she recalled herself and
ran to fire the stove and rattle with the dishes.

The old man frowned. He wanted to argue with her, to say something.
But grandma didn't let him open his mouth.

"What are you staring at?" she shouted. "Who are you to be stubborn?
What do you think we are? Who are you to stand up against them? Some
people came out there to Orozkul, with a truck big enough to carry ten logs
up the mountains. And Orozkul won't even look our way. I begged and
pleaded, I crawled before him. He wouldn't let your daughter cross the
threshold. There she sits, your barren one, at Seidakhmat's. Crying her eyes
out. And cursing you, her brainless father . . ."

"That'll do," the old man lost his patience, and, turning toward the
door, he said: "Give the boy some hot milk, he's sick."

"I'll give him, I'll give him, just go, go, for God's sake." And after he
left, she still grumbled: "What's come over him? He never crossed anyone,
always quiet as a mouse, and now —look at him. And grabs Orozkul's horse
on top of it, and gallops off. It's all on your account." She shot a vicious
glance at the boy. "At least, if it was somebody worth taking risks for . . ."

Then she brought the boy hot milk with yellow molten butter. The milk
scalded his lips, but grandma made him drink it:

"Drink, drink, the hotter the better, don't be afraid. The only way to
drive out a cold."

The boy burned his mouth, tears stood in his eyes. And grandma
suddenly relented:

"All right, let it cool, let it cool a bit. . . . Picked such a time to get
sick," she sighed.

The boy had long wanted to urinate. He got up, feeling a strange,
sweet weakness throughout his body. But grandma stopped him:

"You want to piss?"

"Yes," the boy admitted.

"Wait, just a minute."

She brought him a basin.

Awkwardly turning away, the boy let the stream run into the basin,
wondering at the urine being so hot and yellow.
 He felt much better now. His head ached less. The boy lay quietly in
bed, grateful for grandma's help and thinking that he must get well by
morning and go to school tomorrow without fail. He also thought about
how he would tell every-one at school about the three deer that had come to
their forest. He would tell them that the white doe was the Horned Mother
Deer herself, that she had a calf, already big and strong, and a great brown
buck with huge horns; that he was powerful and guarded the Horned
Mother Deer and her son from the wolves. He also thought that, if the deer
remained with them and didn't go away, the Horned Mother Deer would
soon bring Uncle Orozkul and Aunt Bekey the magic cradle.

In the morning the deer came down to the river. They emerged from
the upper levels of the forest when the brief autumn sun was halfway up
over the mountain range. The higher it rose, the brighter and warmer it
became below, among the mountains. After the numb, chill night the forest
came alive with the movement of light and colors.

Making their way among the trees, the deer walked unhurriedly,
warming themselves in the sunny clearings, nibbling the dewy foliage on
the branches. They went in the same order: first the buck, then the fawn,
and last, the high- flanked doe, the Horned Mother Deer. They followed the
path down which Orozkul and the old man had dragged the ill-starred pine
log to the river the day before. The trace left by the log in the black earth
was still fresh—a ragged furrow with scattered tufts of grass. The path led
to the ford where the log had been left, caught among the rocks.

The deer walked to this spot because it was the most convenient
watering place. Orozkul, Seidakhmat, and the two men who had come for
the timber walked to the river to find the best way of getting the truck down
to the bank, in order to get the log out with a towline. Grandpa Momun
ambled uncertainly, with bowed head, behind the others. He did not know
how to conduct himself after the previous day's scandal. He did not know
what to do, what to say. Would Orozkul allow him to take part in the work?
Would he drive him away as he had done yesterday, when Momun was
going to try and drag the log out with the horse? What if he said, "Hey,
what are you doing here? Weren't you told you're fired?" What if he
insulted him before strangers and sent him home? The old man was torn
with doubts. He walked as to an execution, yet he walked on. Behind him
was grandma, pretending that she was just going on her own, out of
curiosity. But she was really keeping an eye on him. She drove Obliging
Momun to seek a reconciliation with Orozkul, to win his forgiveness.

Orozkul stepped out importantly—the lord of the woods. He walked,

puffing, snorting, and throwing stern glances right and left. And though his
head ached from the previous night's drinking binge, he gloated vengefully.
Glancing back, he saw old Momun ambling behind him like a loyal dog
whipped by his master. "Wait, I'm not done with you yet. I won't even
glance at you now. You're nothing to me—an empty place. I'll have you
crawling at my feet," Orozkul gloated, remembering the frenzied shrieks of
his wife the night before as he was kicking her, stretched on the ground
before him, throwing her out of his house. "Just wait and see. I'll get these
fellows with their logs out of the way, and then I'll bring the two together,
let them go at one another's throats. She'll scratch her father's eyes out—
she's gone berserk, like a she-wolf," Orozkul thought to himself during the
breaks in the conversation with his visitor as they walked.

The man's name was Koketay. He was a dark, burly peasant, the
bookkeeper from the collective farm by the lake. He had long been on
friendly terms with Orozkul. About twelve years ago he had built himself a
house. Orozkul had helped him with the timber, selling him logs for boards
at bargain prices. Then the man had married off his older son and built a
house for him as well. And again Orozkul had supplied him with logs. Now
Koketay was setting up his younger son on his own, and needed more
timber for construction. This time, too, his old friend Orozkul came to his
aid. Life was damned difficult. You did something and hoped that now, at
last, you'd have some peace for a while. But no, something else kept turning
up. And a man couldn't get along nowadays without people like Orozkul.

"God willing, we'll invite you to a housewarming soon. Come, we'll

have plenty of fun," Koketay was saying to Orozkul.

The other puffed smugly on his cigarette.

"Thanks. When we are asked, we don't refuse; when we're not asked,
we don't invite ourselves. If you call me, I'll come. It wouldn't be the first
time I visited you. I'm just thinking—it might be best if you don't start out
back till evening. Let it get darker. The main thing is to get past the Soviet
farm without attracting attention. If they find out . . ."

"You're right enough." Koketay was undecided. "But it's a long wait
till evening. We'll start out slowly. After all, there's no patrol post on the
road to check us. Unless you accidentally run into the police or someone
like that . . ."

"That's just it," mumbled Orozkul, frowning with heart-burn and

headache. "You can travel a hundred times on business and never meet a
dog on the road, and then you'll take some timber once in a hundred years,
and you'll be sure to get into a mess. It's always that way."

They fell silent, each thinking his own thoughts. Orozkul was angry
because the log had been left in the river. Otherwise, the truck could have
been loaded last night and sent off at dawn, and he'd be rid of the worry. But
no, they had to get in trouble! And it was all the old man's fault, with his
sudden rebellion. Decided to go against authority, to have his own way. All
right! He will not get away with it so easily . . .

The deer were drinking when the men came to the river at the opposite
bank. Busy with their own affairs and conversations, the people did not
even notice the animals across the river.

The deer stood in the reeds, red with the morning light, up to their
ankles in water, on the clear, pebbled bottom. They drank in small sips,
unhurriedly, stopping now and, then. The water was icy. And the sun above
was getting ever warmer and more pleasant. As they quenched their thirst,
the deer enjoyed the sun. The dew that had dripped abundantly upon them
on the way down was drying out. A light mist rose from their backs. The
morning of that day was blessed and serene.

And the people still did not notice the deer. One of them returned to
the truck, the others remained on the bank. Their ears alert, the deer caught
the occasional voices coming from the other bank. When the truck with the
trailer appeared, they started, a shiver running down their skins. The truck
clattered and roared. The deer stirred, deciding to withdraw. But the
machine stopped and ceased to clatter. The animals lingered. Nevertheless,
they cautiously began to move away—the people on the opposite bank were
speaking too loudly and moving about too much.

The deer quietly walked up the path among the low- growing shrubs,
their backs and horns appearing and disappearing over the greenery. And
the people still failed to see them. And only when they started across the
dry sandy stretch beyond the shrubs the people suddenly caught sight of
them —clear against the lilac-colored sand, in the bright sunlight. And they
stopped short in mid-movement, with open mouths.

"Look, look at that!" Seidakhmat was the first to cry out. "Deer!
Where did they come from?"

"What's all the shouting for! We saw them yesterday," Orozkul spoke
indifferently. "Where from! They came, so they're here."

"Oh, oh, oh," the burly Koketay cried admiringly, so excited that he
had to unbutton the collar of his shirt that seemed to have grown tight.
"Such smooth ones," he ex-claimed. "Must have had plenty of food all
summer."

"And the doe! Look at her stepping out," the driver echoed. "As big as
a mare. First time I've seen one like her."

"And the buck! Look at those horns! How does he hold them up? And
they aren't afraid of anything. Where do they come from, Orozkul?"
Koketay kept asking, his little pig's eyes glinting greedily.

"Must be from the sanctuary," Orozkul replied importantly, with lordly

dignity. "They came over the pass, from the other side. Sure, they are not
afraid. No one to frighten them, so they're not afraid."

"If only I had a gun now!" Seidakhmat burst out suddenly. "I'll bet
there's more than two hundred pounds of meat there, eh?"

Momun, who had stood timidly at the side till now, could not contain
himself any longer.
 "What are you saying, Seidakhmat! You're not allowed to hunt them,"
he said in a low voice.

Orozkul threw a sidelong, frowning glance at the old man. "You dare
to talk yet!" he thought with hatred. He was tempted to curse him out so
that the old man would drop on the spot, but he restrained himself. After all,
there were strangers present.

"We'll do without sermons," he said with irritation, without looking at

Momun. "Hunting is banned in places where they live. And they don't live
in these parts, so we are not responsible for them. Is that clear?" He gave
the old man a threatening look.

"It's clear," Momun answered meekly and, bowing his head, walked
away to the side. Grandma stealthily gave him another tug on the sleeve.

"Can't you keep quiet," she hissed. Everybody seemed embarrassed.

They looked again at the animals ascending the steep path. The deer
walked single file: the red brown buck went first, proudly carrying his great
horns; next came the hornless calf; the Horned Mother Deer closed the
procession. Against the bare clay of the slope the deer stood out distinctly.
Every graceful movement, every step were clearly visible.

"Ah, what a picture!" the driver, a round-eyed, quiet young fellow,

burst out enthusiastically. "A pity I don't have my camera—it would have
been a beauty . . ."

"Never mind beauty," Orozkul broke in morosely. "No use standing

here. Beauty won't fill your belly. Come on, back up the truck to the water,
drive right in. Seidakhmat, take off your boots," he commanded, secretly
glorying in his power. "You too," he pointed at the driver. "You'll tie the
towline to the log. Get moving. There's still a lot to do."

Seidakhmat began to pull off his boots. They were a bit tight.

"What are you gaping at, go help him." Grandma poked the old man
when no one was looking. "And get your boots off, too, go in with them,"
she ordered in a vicious whisper.

Grandpa Momun hurried over to help Seidakhmat with his boots, then
he quickly pulled off his own. Meantime, Orozkul and Koketay directed the
truck.

"Here, this way, this way."

"Just a bit over to the left. That's it."

"A little more."

Hearing the unfamiliar noise below, the deer quickened their steps.
They glanced back anxiously, and leaped over the cliff, disappearing among
the birches.

"Oh, they're gone!" Koketay cried out regretfully.

"Don't worry, they won't get away!" Orozkul boasted, guessing his
thoughts and pleased with his own cleverness. "Don't leave till evening, be
my guest. God himself has willed it. I'll treat you to a feast you won't
forget." Orozkul roared with laughter and slapped his friend on the back.
Orozkul could be genial too.

"Well, in that case, I'll go along: you're the host," the burly Koketay
agreed, baring his powerful yellow teeth in a grin.

The truck was already at the river's edge, its rear wheels halfway in the
water. The driver did not venture to back in any deeper. Now the towline
had to be carried to the log. If it was long enough, there would be no great
difficulty in freeing the log from the rocks.

The towline was made of steel—it was long and heavy, and it had to be
dragged across the water to the log. The driver reluctantly began to pull off
his boots, glancing at the water anxiously. He had not yet decided whether it
might not be best to go in with his boots on. "Maybe it's better to go in
barefoot," he thought to himself. "The water will get in over the boot tops
anyway—the river's deep there, up to the hips. Then I will have to go
around all day in wet boots." But then he imagined how cold the water must
be. Grandpa Momun saw him hesitating and hurried over to him.

"Don't get your boots off, son," he said. "Seidakhmat and I will
manage it."

"Why, no, aksakal," the driver objected, embarrassed. "You're a guest,

and we are local folks. You'd better get behind the wheel," the old man
insisted.

Momun and Seidakhmat pushed a stick through the roll of steel cable
and dragged it over the water. The moment he stepped in, Seidakhmat
yelled, "Oh-h! It's ice, not water!"

Orozkul and Koketay grinned condescendingly, urging him on:

"It's all right, go on, go on. We'll get you warm quick enough!"

And Grandpa Momun did not utter a sound. He did not even feel the
icy cold. With head drawn into his shoulders, to make himself as invisible
as he could, he walked with his bare feet over the slippery underwater
rocks, praying to God for one thing only—to keep Orozkul from ordering
him to return, from driving him away, from insulting him before strangers;
to make Orozkul forgive him, stupid, miserable old man that he was.

And Orozkul said nothing. He seemed unaware of Momun's zeal.

Momun did not exist for him. But in his heart he triumphed—he had broken
the rebellious old man after all. "So," Orozkul grinned inwardly. "Crawled
over, eh? Groveling at my feet. Ah, if only I had more power—I'd twist
some bigger fellows to my will. I'd get them crawling in the dust. If only
they gave me—oh, even a collective farm or a Soviet farm to manage. I'd
show them how to run things. Giving people too much leeway. And then
they complain there's no respect for chairmen and directors. Take some
low-down shepherd, and he talks with the authorities as if he was an equal.
The fools, they don't deserve their power! Is that the way to deal with
people? There was a time, and not so long ago, when heads flew, and not a
peep from anybody. On the contrary, they loved you all the more, sang
praises all the louder. That was a time! And now? The lowest of the low—
and takes it suddenly into his head to go against you. Go on, go on, I'll see
you eating dirt before you're through," Orozkul gloated, throwing an
occasional sidelong glance at old Momun.

And the old man, stumbling through the icy water, dragged the cable
together with Seidakhmat, content because Orozkul already seemed to have
forgiven him. "Forgive me, old fool that I am, that things turned out that
way," he spoke mentally to Orozkul. "I lost my temper yesterday. Galloped
off to bring the boy from school. A lonely child, how can a man help
pitying him? Today he did not even go to school. Caught a chill. Forget it,
don't hold it against me. After all, you are no stranger to me either. You
think I do not wish you and my daughter happiness? If God would grant me
the blessing to hear the cry of a newborn infant from your house —yours,
and my daughter's—may I not leave the spot if I would not be happy to give
up my own soul to God that very moment. I swear, I'd weep with joy. If
only—forgive my saying so—you wouldn't hurt my daughter. As for work
—as long as I can stand up on my feet, I will do anything. Anything. Just
say the word . . ."

Standing a little on the side by the river, grandma was urging on the
old man with gestures and her whole body: "Do your best! You see, he has
forgiven you. Do as I tell you, and everything will be all right."

The boy slept. He woke once for a moment at the sound of a shot and
instantly went back to sleep. Exhausted by the previous sleepless night and
by his illness, he sank into a deep and quiet sleep. And even as he slept, he
felt how pleasant it was to lie in bed, stretched out freely, without being
racked by chills and fever. He would have slept a long time if it had not
been for grandma and Aunt Bekey. They tried to speak in low voices, but
they clattered the dishes, and the boy awakened.

"Take this large bowl. And the platter," grandma whispered excitedly
in the front room. "And I will bring the pail and the sieve. Oh, my back. I'm
all worn out. So much work. But thank God, I'm so glad."

"Ah, eneke, I cannot tell you how glad I am. Yesterday I was ready to
die. If it wasn't for Guldzhamal, I would have done myself in."
 "The things she'll say!" grandma chided. "Did you take the pepper?
Come on. God himself has sent a gift to celebrate your reconciliation.
Come, come."

As they were leaving the house, already on the threshold, Aunt Bekey
asked grandma about the boy:

"He's still sleeping?"

"Let him sleep awhile," grandma replied. "When it's ready, we'll bring
him some hot soup."

The boy did not fall asleep again. From the yard came the sounds of
steps and voices. Aunt Bekey laughed, and Guldzhamal and grandma
laughed, answering her. There were some unfamiliar voices. "Must be the
people who came last night," the boy decided. "So they're still here." The
only person he could neither hear nor see was Grandpa Momun. Where was
he? What was he doing?

Listening to the voices outside, the boy waited for his grandfather. He
was very eager to tell him about the deer he had seen yesterday. It was
almost winter. Enough hay must be left for them in the woods. Let them eat.
It would be good to tame them, so they would not be afraid of people at all.
Perhaps they'd come across the river right to the post, into the yard. Then he
and grandpa could feed them something nice, something they liked best of
all. He wondered what they liked best. He might train the fawn to follow
him wherever he went. Wouldn't that be great! Perhaps he'd go to school
with him, too?

The boy waited for his grandfather, but he did not come. Instead of
him, Seidakhmat suddenly entered the house. He was very cheerful. He
swayed on his feet, smiling to himself. And when he came nearer, the smell
of alcohol struck the boy's nostrils. The boy hated that ugly, acrid smell,
which re-minded him of Orozkul's cruelty, of the suffering of grandpa and
Aunt Bekey. But in contrast to Orozkul, Seidakhmat became kinder and
merrier when he drank. Alcohol somehow made him inoffensively silly,
though he was never very bright even when sober. Whenever he was tipsy,
Grandpa Momun would ask:
 "What are you grinning about, like a ninny? You've gotten pickled,
too?"

"Aksakal, I love you. Honest, I do, like my own father."

"A-oh, at your age . . . Other fellows drive cars and trucks, and you
can't manage even your own tongue. If I was your age, I'd be a tractor
driver at the very least."

"Aksakal, my commander in the army said I was no good at that. But

I'm infantry, aksakal, and without infantry an army is neither here nor there
. . ."

"Infantry! You are a loafer, not a soldier. And your wife . . . God has
no eyes. A hundred like you aren't worth a single Guldzhamal."

"That's why we're here, aksakal—there's one of me, and one of her."

"Ah, what's the use of talking to you. Strong as an ox, and the brain of
an . . ." And Grandpa Momun would shake his head hopelessly.

"M—moo, m—moo," Seidakhmat would bellow and roar with

laughter.

Then, stopping in the middle of the yard, he would start up the strange
song he had brought from heaven knows where:

"From the red-red mountains

I have come on a red stallion.

Hey, redheaded merchant, open the door,

We shall drink red wine.

"From the rust brown mountains

I have come on a rust brown ox.

 Hey, rust brown merchant, open the door,

We shall drink rust brown wine."

And the song could go on and on without end. He would come from
the mountains on a camel, a rooster, a mouse, a turtle, anything that moved.
The boy liked Seidakhmat drunk even better than he liked him sober.

Therefore, when the tipsy Seidakhmat appeared in the room, the boy
welcomed him with a smile.

"Hah!" Seidakhmat cried out with surprise. "And they told me you're
sick. You aren't sick at all. So why aren't you out in the yard? That won't do,
it won't do at all."

He flung himself upon the bed. His breath heavy with alcohol, his
hands and clothing giving off the smell of raw fresh meat, he began to
shake the boy and kiss him. The rough stubble on his cheeks scraped the
boy's face.

"Stop it, Uncle Seidakhmat," the boy begged. "Where is grandpa? Did
you see him?"

"Your grandpa's out there—I mean . . ." Seidakhmat waved his hand in
the air. "We . . . oh, we dragged the log out of the water. So we took a drink
to warm up. And now he's . . . you know, he's cooking the meat. Get up.
Come on, get dressed—and let's go. It isn't right! We're all there, and you
are here alone."

"Grandpa said I wasn't to get up," said the boy.

"Forget what he said. Come on, let's take a look. Such things don't
happen every day. Today we've got a feast. The bowl is fat, the spoon is fat,
and the mouth is fat! Get up!"

With drunken clumsiness he began to dress the boy.

"I'll do it myself." The boy tried to push him aside. At-tacks of

dizziness came over him. But the drunk Seidakhmat would not listen. He
felt he was doing a good deed, since the boy had been abandoned at home,
and this was a day when the bowl was fat, and the spoon was fat, and the
mouth was fat. . . .

Unsteadily, the boy followed Seidakhmat out of the house. The day in
the mountains was windy. Clouds scudded fast across the sky. And while
the boy was crossing the porch, the weather changed abruptly twice—from
intolerably bright sunlight to unpleasant murky gray. The boy felt that this
gave him a headache. Driven by a gust of wind, the smoke from the burning
fire struck his face. His eyes burned. "They must be doing the laundry
today," thought the boy, because on big laundry days a fire was made in the
yard to boil water in the huge black cauldron for all three households. No
one could pick up the cauldron alone. Aunt Bekey and Guldzhamal usually
lifted it together.

The boy liked big laundry days. To begin with, there was the fire in the
huge open hearth—you could play around it, not as in the house. Secondly,
it was very interesting to hang out the wash. The white, blue, and red things
on the line made the yard festive. The boy also liked to steal up to the
clothes on the line and press his cheek to the damp fabric.

This time there was no wash in the yard. And the fire on the hearth
was very big. Thick steam rose from the boiling cauldron, filled to the brim
with large chunks of meat. The meat was almost ready; its smell and the
smell of the fire tickled the nose and made the mouth water. Aunt Bekey in
a new red dress, new leather boots, and a flowered kerchief that slipped off
on her shoulders, was bending over the cauldron, removing the foam with a
ladle, and Grandpa Momun stood near her on his knees, turning the flaming
logs in the hearth.

"There he is, your grandpa," Seidakhmat said to the boy. "Come on."

And he began his song:

"From the red-red mountains

I have come on a red stallion . . ."

 At that moment Orozkul looked out of the barn door, with a shaven
head, with an ax in his hands and rolled-up sleeves.

"Where did you disappear to?" he shouted angrily to Seidakhmat. "Our

guest is chopping wood"—he nodded at the driver—"and you sing songs."

"Oh, that won't take a moment," Seidakhmat reassured him, walking

toward the driver. "Come on, brother, I'll do it."

The boy approached his grandfather, who was kneeling by the fire. He
went up to him from behind.

"Ata," he said.

The old man did not hear him.

"Ata," the boy repeated, touching him on the shoulder. The old man
glanced back, and the boy did not recognize him. Grandpa was drunk. The
boy could not remember when he had seen him even tipsy. If it ever
happened, it could only have been at some wake for one of the Issyk-Kul
old men, where vodka is served to everyone, even the women. But just like
that, for no reason—this had never happened before.

The old man turned to the boy with a strange, wild, re- remote look.
His face was red and hot, and when he recognized his grandson, it turned
still redder. It flushed and immediately turned pale. Grandpa hurriedly rose
to his feet.

"What is it, eh?" he said hoarsely, pressing the boy to himself. "What
is it, eh? What is it?" He seemed unable to say any other word, as though he
had lost the power of speech. His agitation communicated itself to the boy.

"Are you sick, ata?" he asked anxiously.

"No, no, it's nothing," Grandpa Momun muttered. "Go, go, walk about
a little. I've got to . . . I'll look after the wood . . . I . . ."

He almost pushed the boy away from himself. As though turning his
back on the whole world, he knelt again before the hearth, never glancing
around, absorbed only in himself and in the fire. The old man did not see
his grandson shift from foot to foot with a lost look, then go toward
Seidakhmat, who was chopping wood.

The boy could not understand what had come over his grandfather or
what was happening in the yard. And only as he drew nearer to the barn did
he notice a large mound of red fresh meat, piled on a skin spread hair down
on the ground. Along the edges of the skin, blood still ran down in pale
trickles. A bit farther away, on the garbage heap, the dog growled, tearing at
some entrails. A dark-faced stranger, huge as a rock, squatted beside the
mound of meat. It was Koketay. He and Orozkul, armed with knives, were
cutting the meat into pieces, calmly, unhurriedly, throwing the dismembered
parts into different places on the outstretched skin.

"What a pleasure! What a smell!" the dark, huge man was saying in a
deep voice, sniffing the meat.

"Take it, take it, throw it in your pile," Orozkul urged generously. "God
gave us from his herd on the day of your arrival. It doesn't happen every
day."

Orozkul puffed breathlessly, getting up now and then, stroking his full
belly, as though he had overeaten. And it could be seen at once that he had
already taken a good share of drinks. He grunted hoarsely, raising his head
to catch his breath. His face, meaty as a cow's udder, shone with well-fed
self-congratulation.

The boy turned numb, as if a chill wind froze him to the spot, when he
caught sight of a horned deer's head by the barn wall. The severed head lay
in the dust, stained dark with blood. It looked like an uprooted stump kicked
off the road. Near the head, carelessly flung down, were four hooved feet,
chopped off at the knee.

The boy stared horrified at the grim sight. He could not believe his
eyes. Before him lay the head of the Horned Mother Deer. He wanted to
run, but his feet refused to obey him. He stood and looked at the mutilated,
dead head of the white doe. The one who had just yesterday been the
Horned Mother Deer, who looked at him from the other bank with kind,
intent eyes, with whom he had spoken mentally and pleaded for a magic
cradle with the silver bell. All this had suddenly been turned into a
shapeless mass of meat, a torn skin, severed legs, and a discarded head.

He should have gone, but he stood, petrified, unable to understand how

and why this had happened. The huge dark man who was dressing the meat
lifted up a kidney from his pile with the tip of his knife and held it out to the
boy.

"Here, boy, roast it in the coals, you'll have a tasty piece," he said.

The boy did not stir."Take it!" Orozkul commanded.

The boy stretched out his hand unfeelingly and stood clutching the
delicate, still-warm kidney of the Horned Mother Deer in his cold palm.
And Orozkul had in the meantime lifted up the head of the white doe by the
horns.

"Huh, heavy." He weighed it in his hand. "The horns alone must weigh
God knows how much."

He leaned the head sideways against a log, picked up an ax, and began
to chop the horns out of the skull.

"What horns!" he kept repeating, crashing his ax into the skull. "That's
for your grandpa." He winked at the boy. "When he dies, we'll set the horns
on his grave. And don't let anybody say we don't respect him. What more
could he ask? For such a pair of horns a man ought to be glad to die this
very day." He roared with laughter, aiming his ax.

But the horns would not yield. It turned out that it wasn't so simple to
chop them out. The drunken Orozkul missed his aim, and this infuriated
him. The head rolled off the log, and Orozkul began to chop it on the
ground. The head jumped away, and he chased it with the ax.

The boy started and recoiled at each new blow, but he could not force
himself to leave. As in a nightmare, held to the spot by some dreadful,
unknown power, he stood and wondered that the glassy, unblinking eye of
the Horned Mother Deer did not try to save itself from the ax. It would not
blink, it would not close with fear. The head had long turned gray with filth
and dust, but the eye remained clear and seemed to look out at the world
with the same mute astonishment as at the moment when death had found
it. The boy was terrified that the drunken Orozkul might strike the eye.

And the horns still resisted. Orozkul was now altogether beside
himself. In blind rage, he no longer aimed, but struck the head wherever the
blow would fall—both with the butt end and the sharp edge of the ax.

"You'll break the horns that way. Let me do it." Seidakhmat came over.

"Get away! I'll do it myself! Break them—hell!" Orozkul wheezed,

swinging the ax.

"As you wish." Seidakhmat spat down on the ground and went toward
his house. He was followed by the huge, dark man, dragging his share of
the meat in a sack.

And Orozkul, with drunken obstinacy, continued to rain blow after

blow on the head of the Horned Mother Deer by the barn wall. One might
have thought that he was wreaking on it a long-awaited revenge.

"You rotten scum! You damned bitch!" He kicked the head with his
boot as if the dead ears could hear him. "Oh, no, you will not have it your
way!" And he rushed at it again and again with the ax. "May I not leave the
spot if I don't get you. There! There!" He hammered at it. The skull
cracked, and pieces flew in all directions.

The boy cried out sharply when the ax struck right across the eye. A
dark, thick fluid poured out of the broken eye socket. The eye died,
disappeared. . . .

"I can smash bigger heads than yours! I'll twist out bigger horns!"
Orozkul roared in a fit of savage fury and hatred for the innocent head.

At last he succeeded in crushing the crown and the forehead. He threw

away the ax. Seizing the horns with both hands and pressing the head down
with his boot, he gave the horns a brutal twist with all his strength. The
horns began to give way, crunching like roots being torn from the earth.

Those were the horns on which the Horned Mother Deer was going to
bring Orozkul and Aunt Bekey the magic cradle . . .

The boy felt sick. He turned, dropped the kidney, and slowly walked
away. He was terribly afraid that he might fall or vomit right there, before
all those people. Pale, with cold, sticky sweat on his forehead, he stumbled
past the blazing hearth over which the cauldron still sent up hot steam and
by which, his back to everyone, the miserable old Momun still sat with his
face to the fire. The boy did not trouble the old man. All he wanted was to
get into his bed as quickly as he could, lie down, and pull the blanket up
over his head. Not to see or hear anything. To forget.

Aunt Bekey happened to cross his path. Incongruously dressed up, but
with the black-and-blue bruises from Orozkul's blows still on her face, thin
as a rail and inappropriately gay, she rushed around all day preparing the
``big feast."

"What is the matter with you?" she asked the boy.

"My head hurts," he said.

"Oh, my poor darling," she said in a sudden access of tenderness, and

began to shower him with kisses.

She, too, was drunk. She, too, smelled sickeningly of vodka.

"His head hurts," she mumbled sympathetically. "My lamb. You must
be hungry."

"No, I am not. I want to lie down."

"Come, then, come, you'll lie down at my house. Why should you be
all by yourself—everybody's coming to us. The guests, and our own
people."
 And she dragged him off. When they were passing the hearth again,
Orozkul appeared from behind the barn, sweaty and red as an inflamed
udder. Triumphantly, he threw the deer's horns he had chopped off next to
Grandpa Momun. The old man rose a little from his crouching position.

Without looking at him, Orozkul lifted a pail of water and began to

gulp, spilling the water over himself.

"You can die now," he flung at the old man, and began to drink again,
the water pouring down all over him. The boy heard grandpa mumble:

"Thanks, son, thanks. Now death's no longer frightening. Naturally. I

have honor and respect, so why . . ." "I'll go home," said the boy, overcome
with dizziness. But Aunt Bekey would not hear of it.

"No use your being all alone there." And almost by force she led him
into her house and laid him down in the corner on the bed.

In the house everything was ready for the feast. Everything was
cooked, roasted, baked. Grandma and Guldzhamal were busily arranging it
all. Aunt Bekey rushed back and forth between the house and the hearth in
the yard. While they waited for the main course, Orozkul and the huge dark
man treated themselves to tea, half-reclining on colored blankets, their
elbows resting on cushions. They had suddenly become very important in
their bearing—they felt like princes. Seidakhmat poured the tea into their
cups.

And the boy lay quietly in the corner, every muscle tied and tense. He
was shaken by chills. He wanted to get up and go, but was afraid that he
would retch the moment he got out of bed. And therefore he suppressed the
lump stuck in his throat, afraid to make the slightest move.

The women soon called Seidakhmat into the yard, and he reappeared
in the door with a mound of steaming meat in an enormous enameled bowl.
He carried it with difficulty and set it down before Orozkul and Koketay.
The women followed him with a variety of dishes.
 Everybody began to settle down, preparing knives and plates.
Meantime, Seidaktimat poured vodka in the glasses.

"I will be the vodka commander," he guffawed, nodding at the bottles

in the corner.

The last to come in was Grandpa Momun. The old man looked strange,
even more pitiful than ever. He wanted to sit down somewhere at the side,
but the dark, huge Koketay generously invited him to sit down next to him.

"Come this way, aksakal."

"Thank you. I'll sit here, I'm not a guest here, after all." Momun tried
to refuse.

"Oh, no, you are the eldest," Koketay insisted, and seated him between
himself and Seidakhmat. "Let's have a drink, aksakal, in honor of your
marvelous success. You have the first word."

Grandpa Momun cleared his throat uncertainly.

"To peace in this home," he said with difficulty. "And where there's
peace, there's also happiness, my children."

"Right, right!" everybody echoed, turning the glasses bottoms up.

"But what about you? No, no, that will not do! You toast to the
happiness of your daughter and your son-in-law and then don't drink
yourself," Koketay reproached the embarrassed Momun.

"Well, if it's to happiness, sure . . ." he mumbled hurriedly. And, to

everyone's surprise, he gulped down almost a full glass in a single breath.
Then, stunned, he shook his old head.

"That's the way!"

"Our old man is quite something, you won't find another like him!"

"Your old man is all right!"

 Everybody laughed, everybody was pleased and praised grandpa.

The house became hot and stifling. The boy lay in torment, gripped
with nausea. He lay with eyes closed and heard the drunken people
chomping, gnawing, puffing, as they devoured the flesh of the Horned
Mother Deer. He heard them offering each other tasty tidbits, clinking their
greasy glasses, throwing the gnawed bones into a bowl.

"Not venison—foal's meat!" Koketay praised the food, smacking his

lips.

"You think we're fools—living in the woods without eating such

meat?" said Orozkul.

"Right, that's why we live here," echoed Seidakhrnat.

Everybody praised the meat of the Horned Mother Deer. Grandma,

Aunt Bekey, Guldzhamal, and even Grandpa Momun piled plates for the
boy and shoved them at him. But he refused, until, seeing that he was sick,
they left him alone.

The boy lay with clenched teeth. It seemed to him that this would
make it easier to contain the nausea. But he was tormented most of all by
the awareness of his own helplessness, his inability to do anything to these
people who had killed the Horned Mother Deer. And in his just childish
rage and despair, the boy invented all sorts of revenge—to punish them, to
force them to realize what a dreadful crime they had committed. But he
could think of nothing better than calling silently to Kulubek to help him.
The fellow in the army coat who had come into the mountains with the
other young drivers for hay on that stormy night. He was the only man the
boy knew who could get the better of Orozkul, who could tell him the
whole truth without fear.

At the boy's call, Kulubek came speeding in his truck and jumped out
of the cabin with his gun on the ready: "Where are they?" "There!" They
ran together to Orozkul's house and pulled the door open: "Don't move!
Hands up!" Kulubek cried menacingly from the threshold, aiming his
submachine gun. Everybody was stunned. They froze with panic in their
seats. The food stuck in their throats. With chunks of meat in their greasy
hands, with greasy cheeks and lips, stuffed, drunken, they could not even
stir.

"Get up, vermin!" Kulubek held the muzzle of the gun against
Orozkul's temple. And Orozkul went into a shaking fit and fell on his knees
before Kulubek, stuttering: "Ha-ha- have p-pity, d-d-don't k-k-kill me!" But
Kulubek was implacable. "Get out, vermin! This is the end of you!" With a
strong kick at the fat behind, he compelled Orozkul to get up and go out of
the house. And everybody else, terrified and silent, went out.

"Stand up against the wall!" Kulubek ordered Orozkul. "For killing the
Horned Mother Deer, for chopping out her horns, on which she carried the
cradle, you are sentenced to death!" Orozkul crawled in the dust, whining,
moaning: "Don't kill me, I haven't even any children. I am alone in the
whole world. I've neither son, nor daughter . . ."

Whatever has become of his haughty dignity? A wretched, miserable

coward. Not even worth killing.

"All right," the boy said to Kulubek. "We won't kill him. But let this
man go from here and never come back. We do not need him here. Let him
leave."

Orozkul stood up, pulled up his trousers, and, afraid to glance back,
ran away at a quick trot—fat, puffy, with sagging trousers. But Kulubek
stopped him: "Wait! We'll say to you one final word. You will never have
any children. You are an evil and worthless man. Nobody and nothing loves
you. The forest doesn't love you, not a single tree, not even a single blade of
grass has any love for you. You are a fascist. Go from here—forever.
Double quick!" Orozkul ran off without a backward glance. "Schnell,
schnell!" Kulubek laughed after him, and fired into the air to scare him.

The boy laughed and rejoiced. And after Orozkul had disappeared
from sight, Kulubek said to all the others, who huddled guiltily before the
door: "How is it that you've lived with such a man? Aren't you ashamed?"
 The boy felt a sense of relief. Justice had been done. And his fancy
seemed so real that he forgot entirely where he was, forgot the reason for
the drunken feast in Orozkul's house.

A burst of laughter recalled him from this blessed state. The boy
opened his eyes and listened. Grandpa Momun was not in the room. He had
evidently stepped out somewhere. The women were clearing the dishes,
preparing to serve tea. Seidakhmat was loudly telling some story. The
others laughed at his words.

"And what happened then?"

"Go on!"

"No, just tell it again," Orozkul begged, rolling with laughter. "How
you said to him—you know . . . How you scared him. Oh, I'll burst!"

"Well, you see," Seidakhmat repeated willingly, "we were riding up to

the deer, and they stood at the edge of the woods, all three of them. We tied
the horses to trees, when the old man suddenly grabs my hand: 'We cannot
shoot deer,' he says. 'We're Bugans, children of the Horned Mother Deer!'

And looks at me like a child, begging with his eyes. And I think—
another minute, and I'll burst out laughing. But I didn't. No, I told him with
a straight face: 'What's the matter with you? Do you want to end your days
in prison?' `No,' he says. 'And don't you know,' I say to him, 'that those are
fairy tales invented in the ignorant old times when we were ruled by beys,
just to keep down the poor people, to keep them scared?' And his mouth just
drops open: 'What are you saying!' 'Now, then,' I told him, 'better forget that
nonsense. I don't care if you're an old man, I'll write a letter about you to the
right authorities.'"

"Ha, ha, ha!" his listeners roared, and Orozkul laughed more than
anybody else, savoring every bit of the story.

"Well, then, we stole up to them. Another animal would have beat it

long ago, but those crazy deer didn't even think of running. They weren't
afraid of us at all. All the better, I think to myself," the drunken Seidakhmat
boasted. "I went ahead with the gun, the old man behind me. And then I
suddenly began to wonder. I'd never even shot a sparrow in my life. And
now this business. If I missed, they would take off, then try and chase them
in the woods. They'd swing across the pass, and good-bye to the meat. Who
wants to take a chance with such game? And our old man here is a hunter,
he's gotten even bears in his day. So I say to him, 'Here, take the gun, old
man, and shoot.' But he wouldn't touch it, no, no. 'Do it yourself,' he says.
'But I am drunk,' I tell him, and begin to stagger on my feet, as if I couldn't
stand up. He'd seen me share a bottle with you after we got the log out, so I
pretended I was drunk."

"Ha, ha, ha . . ."

"'I'll miss,' I said to him. The deer will get away and won't come back
again. And we cannot return empty-handed, you know that. You'd better
look out. Why do you think they sent us here?' He wouldn't say a word, and
wouldn't touch the gun. 'Oh, well,' I say, `do as you wish.' I threw down the
gun and started walking away. He came behind me. So I say to him, 'I don't
care. If Orozkul kicks me out, I'll go to work in the Soviet farm. But what
will you do, at your age?' He kept quiet. And then I started up, just to
complete the picture, you know:

"'From the red-red mountains

I have come on a red stallion.

Hey, redheaded merchant, open the door. . .”

"Ha, laa, ha . . ."

"Then he believed that I was really drunk. He went back for the gun. I
went back too. While we were arguing, the deer moved off a little. 'Well,' I
say, 'look out now. If they escape, you'll never catch them. Shoot before
they get scared.' The old man took the gun. We started stealing up. And he
kept whispering like a crazy one: 'Forgive me, Horned Mother Deer, forgive
me . . .' And I kept saying, 'Look out, now. If you botch it, you can take off
after the deer, wherever your legs will carry you, but don't come back.'"
 "Ha, ha, ha . . ."

Amid the drunken fumes and laughter the boy felt he was burning hot
and suffocating. His head was splitting with a swelling pain too large for his
skull. It seemed to him that somebody was kicking him in the head, that
somebody was chopping his head with an ax. It seemed to him that
somebody was aiming an ax at his eye, and he turned and twisted his head,
trying to escape the blow. Fainting with heat, he suddenly found himself in
the cold, cold river. He had turned into a fish. Tail, body, fins—everything
was fishlike, except the head, which was his own and still ached. He swam
through the muted, cool, underwater darkness and thought that now he
would remain a fish forever and never go back to the mountains. "I won't
return," he said to himself. "It's better to be a fish, it's better to be a fish . . ."

And no one noticed when the boy slipped out of the bed and left the
house. He had barely reached the corner when he started vomiting.
Grasping at the wall, the boy moaned and wept; suffocating with sobs, tears
running down his face, he muttered:

"No, I'd rather be a fish. I'll swim away from here. I'll be a fish."

And in Orozkul's house drunken voices hooted and shouted with

laughter. This wild laughter deafened the boy, causing him intolerable pain
and anguish. It seemed to him that he was so sick because he was listening
to that monstrous laughter. When he had caught his breath, he started to
cross the yard. Now it was dark and empty. By the extinguished hearth, the
boy stumbled on Grandpa Momun, dead drunk. The old man lay there next
to the chopped-out horns of the Horned Mother Deer. The dog gnawed at a
piece of the deer's head. No one else was there.

The boy wandered off. He went down to the river and stepped into the
water. Hurrying, slipping and falling, he ran down the sloping bottom,
shivering from the icy spray, and when he reached the main current, it
knocked him off his feet. Floundering in the rushing stream, he began to
swim, gagging and freezing.

The boy swam down the river, now on his back, now face down, now
slowing up near rocky shoals, now sweeping down the rapids . . .
 No one knew as yet that the boy had floated down the river as a fish. A
drunken song rose in the yard:

"From the humpy, humpy mountains

I have come on a humpy camel.

Hey, humpbacked merchant, open the door, We shall drink bitter wine .
. ."

But you no longer heard the song. You had gone away, my boy, into
your tale. Did you know that you would never turn into a fish, that you
would never reach Issyk-Kul, or see the white ship, or say to it: "Hello,
white ship, it's I"?

You swam away.

There's only one thing I can say now: you rejected what your child's
soul was unable to make peace with. And that is my consolation. Your life
was like a flash of lightning that gleamed once and went out. And lightning
is born of the sky. And the sky is eternal. And that is my consolation. And
also, that the child's conscience in man is like the bud in a seed; without the
bud the seed will not grow. And whatever awaits us in the world, truth shall
abide forever, as long as men are born and die . . .

And so, in parting, I repeat your words, boy: "Hello, white ship, it's I!"