The Fierce and Beautiful World

by Andrei Platonov

  “Nazar, do you love me any more?” Vera said when they were out on the street. “Let’s go and get a divorce, before you’ve gone away…. You saw—Ksenya’s my daughter, you’re the third one for me, and I’m thirty-four years old.”

  Vera fell silent. Nazar Chagatayev was amazed.

  “Why don’t I love you? Didn’t you love those other men?”

  “I loved them. The second one died, and I still cry for him when I’m alone. The first one deserted me and the girl, I loved him, too, and I was, faithful to him…. And I’ve had to live long times without a man, go out to happy evening parties, and put paper flowers on my own head.”

  “But why don’t I love you?”

  “You love Ksenya, I know…. She’ll be eighteen, and you thirty, maybe a little more. You’ll get married. Just don’t lie to me, and don’t get upset. I’m used to losing people.”

  Chagatayev stood in front of this woman, not understanding anything. What was strange to him was not her grief but the fact that she believed that she was doomed to loneliness although he had married her and shared her lot. She was clinging to her grief, and was in no hurry to squander it. It meant that in the deepest part of a person’s reason or of his heart there exists an enemy force which darkens one’s life even in the embrace of loving arms, even under the kisses of one’s children.

  “Is this why you wouldn’t live with me?” Chagatayev asked.

  “Yes, this is why. For you didn’t know I had a daughter like that, you thought—that 1 was younger, and purer…”

  “Well, and what of it? It all makes no difference to me.”

  They walked quietly back to Vera’s room. She stood in the middle of her dwelling place, without taking off her raincoat, indifferent and alien to everything, to the people and the things around her. At this moment she would have given away all her belongings to her neighbors; such a good deed would have comforted her a little, and diminished her suffering.

  “Well, and how can I go on living now?” Vera asked, talking to herself.

  Chagatayev understood Vera. He put his arms around her, and held her for a long time, in order to soothe her if only with his own warmth, because suffering which has been invented is the most inconsolable of all and does not surrender to any words.

  Little by little Vera began to come out of her grief.

  “Ksenya loves you, too…. I’ll bring her up, I’ll nourish her memory of you, I’ll make a hero out of you. You can count on it, Nazar—the years will go by quickly, and I’m used to separation.”

  “Why get used to what’s bad?” Chagatayev said; he couldn’t understand why happiness seemed so improbable to everybody, and why people tried to entice each other only with grief.

  Grief had displeased Chagatayev since his childhood and now that he was educated, when people and books had taught him. about the struggle of people for happiness, grief seemed to him something vulgar, and he was determined to build a happy world in his fatherland because otherwise he couldn’t understand what to do with his life, or how to exist.

  “Never mind,” Chagatayev said, and he stroked Vera’s big stomach where her child lived, the inhabitant of this future happiness. “Get him born quickly, he’ll be glad.”

  “But maybe he won’t be,” Vera doubted. “Maybe he’ll be an eternal sufferer.”

  “We’re not going to allow unhappiness any longer,” Chagatayev said.

  “Who are we?”

  “We,” Chagatayev repeated quietly and vaguely. For some reason he was afraid to speak clearly, and he blushed a little, as if his secret thought was not a good one.

  Vera hugged him when he left; she had been watching the clock and their parting was drawing near.

  “I know—you’ll be happy, you have a pure heart. So take my Ksenya for yourself.”

  She cried because of her love and her uncertainty about the future; her face at first became even more homely, then her tears washed it, and it took on an unfamiliar look, as if Vera were looking at him from a distance and with a stranger’s eyes.

  [3]

  The train left Moscow far behind; several days of travel had already gone by. Chagatayev was standing by the window and he recognized the places where he had walked as a child, or maybe they were different places but they looked exactly the same. It was the same land, uninhabited and old, the same wind blew, stirring the ragged blades of grass, and the distance stretched out spacious and boring like a doleful, unknown soul. Sometimes Chagatayev wanted to get out and walk along on foot, like a child abandoned by everybody. But his childhood and the old times had long gone by. At the little stations in the steppes he saw portraits of the leaders; often they were made by hand and stuck up somewhere on a fence. The portraits were probably not like the persons they represented, but each had been drawn as if with a child’s hand and feeling for truth: Lenin looked like an old man, like the good father of all the people on earth without kith or kin, but the artist, without thinking, had tried to make the face like his own, so that people could see that he was not living alone on the earth and that he had paternity and kindred—this is why art is more important than technique. And now at any of these stations different people could be seen digging in the ground, planting, or building something, preparing a place for life and shelter for the homeless. Chagatayev saw no empty stations, without any people, or where only exiles could have lived; men were working everywhere, drawing back with all their hearts from centuries-old despair, from fatherlessness, and from poverty.

  Chagatayev remembered his mother’s words: “Go far away, to strangers, may your father be an unknown man.” He had gone a long way, and now he was returning, he had found his father in a stranger who had brought him up and made his heart grow inside him and now, having taught him to understand people, was sending him home again to find and rescue his mother if she was still living, and to bury her if she was lying abandoned and dead on the face of the earth.

  The train stopped one night in the dark steppe. Chagatayev walked out onto the platform of the car. It was quiet, the engine was puffing in the distance, the passengers were sleeping peacefully. Suddenly a single bird cried in the darkness of the plain, something had frightened it. Chagatayev remembered this sound across many years, it was as if his childhood had cried a complaint out of the silent darkness. He listened carefully; some other kind of bird repeated something very quickly, and then was silent, he could remember this sound, too, but he had now forgotten the bird’s name: maybe it was a desert sparrow, maybe a small hawk or a kestrel. Chagatayev got down from the car. He saw a bush not far away, and walking up to it, he took it by a branch and said to it: “Hello, bush!” The bush trembled a little at the man’s touch and then stayed again as it had been—indifferent and asleep.

  Chagatayev walked still farther away. In the steppe something stirred and then hushed, it seemed noiseless only to ears which had lost the habit of listening. The land began to fall away in front of him, and high, blue grass began. Remembering this with interest, Chagatayev walked into the grass; it trembled around him, rippling up from below, for lots of unseen creatures were running away from his approach—some on their stomachs, some on their legs, some in low flight, however they could. They had probably been sitting there quietly until then, only a few of them asleep, by no means all. Each of them had so much to worry about that the daytime, it was clear, was not long enough, or else they were sorry to waste their short lives in sleep and were just barely dozing, letting a film fall halfway across their eyes so they could see a sort of half life, listening to the darkness and not remembering the worries of the daytime.

  Chagatayev soon sensed the smell of wetness; somewhere near there was a pond or a pumping well. He moved in that direction, and quickly came to a small, humid sort of grass, not unlike a little grove in Russia. Chagatayev’s eyes were growing used to the darkness, and now he could see clearly. Here the marshland began; when Chagatayev walked into it all the creatures living in it started to cry, to fly, or to stir about wher
e they were. It was warm in the marshland. Animals and birds had not all disappeared in terror of man; judging by their sounds, some of them had stayed where they were. Chagatayev knew these sounds from long ago, and now, listening to these agonized, weak voices coming out of the warm grass, he felt sympathy for all of this impoverished life.

  The train went on unheard. Chagatayev could have caught up with it, but he did not hurry; only his bag with his clothes was going on with it, and he could get this back in Tashkent. But Chagatayev made up his mind not to try to get it back, so as not to be distracted by anything. He went to sleep in the grass, flattening himself against the ground as he had used to.

  In seven days Chagatayev walked into Tashkent along a footpath which was not far away. He showed up at the Central Committee of the Communist party where he had been expected for some time. The secretary of the committee told Chagatayev that a fairly small nomad people made up of different nationalities was roaming around in extreme poverty somewhere in the district of Sari-Kamish, Ust-Urt and the delta of the Amu-Darya River. Among them there were Turkmen people, Kalpaks, some Uzbeks, Kazaks, Persians, Kurds, Beludzhis and others who had forgotten what they were. Before, these people had lived almost always in the Sari-Kamish valley, from which they had gone out to work on the irrigation canals and pumps of the Khiva oasis, in Tashaouz, in Khodzheim, Kunya-Urgench and other faraway places. The poverty and despair of this people had become so great that they thought of work in the ditches, which lasts for a few weeks in the year, as a blessing because for these days at least they were given flat loaves of bread and even rice to eat. On the pumps these people took the place of donkeys, using their bodies to turn the wooden wheel which lifts the water up to the sluices. A donkey has to be fed right through the year, but these people from Sari-Kamish ate only when they were working and then they went away. The tribe did not die out entirely, and always returned the next year, after languishing somewhere in the bottom of the wilderness.

  “I know that people, that’s where I was born,” Chagatayev said.

  “That’s why you’re being sent there,” the secretary said. “What’s the tribe called, do you remember?”

  “It has no real name,” Chagatayev answered. “But it gave itself a nickname.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dzhan. That means a soul, or dear life. These people don’t have anything except their souls, and the dear life their mothers gave them when they were born.”

  The secretary frowned, and looked sad.

  “That means, all they’ve got is the hearts inside their bodies, and they have that only while the hearts go on beating…”

  “Only their hearts,” Chagatayev agreed, “nothing but life; except for their bodies, nothing belongs to them at all. But even their life isn’t really theirs, it only seems that way.”

  “Did your mother ever tell you just who the Dzhan were?”

  “She told me. Runaways and orphans from all over, and old exhausted slaves who had been driven out. Then there were women who had betrayed their husbands and come there out of fear, girls were always coming who had been in love with men who died suddenly and they didn’t want anyone else. And then people also lived there who didn’t recognize God, people who made jokes about the world, criminals… but I don’t remember them all. I was very little.”

  “Go on back to them now. Find those lost people—the Sari-Kamish valley is empty now and they can go back.”

  “I’ll go,” Chagatayev agreed. “But what am I to make there? Socialism?”

  “What else?” the secretary declared. “Your people have already been in hell, let them live in paradise awhile, and we’ll help them with all our strength…. You’ll be our agent. The district officials sent somebody there, but he’s hardly done anything; it seems, he wasn’t one of us…”

  Then the secretary gave Chagatayev detailed and complete instructions, with a letter of credentials, and Chagatayev took his leave. He planned to float down the Amu-Darya River to his homeland, taking a light canoe somewhere near Chardzhoui.

  At the post office in Tashkent he found a letter from Vera. She wrote that her child was getting close to being born; he was already thinking something inside her body, because he stirred around often and was dissatisfied.

  “But I pet him, I stroke my stomach,” Vera wrote, “and I put my face as close to him as I can and I say: ‘What do you want? You’re warm and quiet there, I’m trying not to move much so you won’t be disturbed—why do you want to get outside of me?’ I’ve grown used to him, I live with him all the time as with a friend, the way I wanted to live with you, and I’m afraid of his birth—not because it will hurt, but because it will be the beginning of separation from him! for good, and his little legs which he’s kicking with now will hurry to go away from his mother, farther and farther— as long as he lives—until my son will be quite hidden from me, from my cried-out eyes…. Ksenya remembers you, but she misses you with you so far away, and not coming back soon, and not even hearing from you. Are you sure you haven’t already died somewhere out there?”

  Chagatayev wrote Vera a postcard, sending kisses to her, and to Ksenya on her different-colored eyes, and telling her a little time must still go by before he could come back; he would come as soon as he had made his people, the Dzhan, happy.

  [4]

  Four canoes were being got ready to go down the river with supplies from Chardzhoui to Nukus. Chagatayev did not try to use his status as an agent sent by the party, since the rights this gave him were not well recognized, and he took a job as a sailor. He agreed to go as far as the Khiva oasis, where he would go ashore.

  Long days of floating down the river followed. In the mornings and the evenings the river was transformed into a torrent of gold, thanks to the light of the sun piercing the water through its living, never-drying silt. This yellow dirt, traveling down the river, sometimes looked like bread, like flowers, like cotton, and even like a man’s body. Sometimes a strange, many-colored bird sat on a rise in the marshlands, twirling around from some emotion inside it, its feathers glistening in the living sunshine, and singing with its glittering thin voice as if a state of bliss had already dawned for all the creatures in the world. The bird reminded Chagatayev of Ksenya, a little woman with a bird’s eyes who was thinking something about him at that moment.

  After fourteen days, Chagatayev went ashore at the Khiva oasis, accepting his pay and thanks from the senior sailor in charge. He stayed for several days in Khiva, and then walked up the road of his childhood toward his homeland in Sari-Kamish. He remembered the road by signs which had grown blurred: the sand dunes now seemed lower, the canal smaller, the path to the nearest well shorter. The sun shone as it had before, but it was not as high as it had been when Chagatayev was small. The little hills, the nomad tents, the donkeys and camels met along the road, the trees along the irrigation ditches, the flying insects, all these were as in the old days and unchanged, but indifferent to Chagatayev, as if they had gone blind without him. Every small creature, object or plant, it seemed, was more proud and more independent of its old attachments than a man.

  Coming up to the dry bed of the Kunya-Darya River, Chagatayev saw a camel which was sitting like a human being, resting its front legs on a drift in the sand. The camel was thin, its humps had sagged down, and it looked shyly out of black eyes like a thoughtful, grieving man. When Chagatayev came up, the camel paid no attention; it was following the movement of some dead grass being blown by the wind—would it come closer or would it blow past? One blade of grass fluttered across the sand close to its mouth, and the camel chewed it with its lips, and swallowed it. In the distance a round tumbleweed was being dragged along by the wind, and the camel watched this big living plant with eyes made gentle by hope, but the tumbleweed moved by on one side; then the camel closed its eyes because it did not know how to cry.

  Chagatayev examined the camel carefully; the animal had long since grown thin from hunger and disease, almost all the hair had fallen ou
t leaving only a few clumps, and as a result the beast was quivering with chills. It had probably been unloaded and abandoned here by some passing caravan as a result of its weakness— or else the master had himself died, and the animal was waiting for him, meanwhile hoarding the strength of life left in it. Having lost the ability to move, the camel had raised itself up on its front legs in order to see the blades of grass being driven past by the wind, and to eat them. When there was no wind it closed its eyes, not wishing to waste its vision to no good end, and stayed in somnolence. It did not want to sink back and lie down—since it was no longer able to stand up—and thus remained sitting all the time, now observing, now drowsing, until death should strike it down or until some insignificant desert animal should finish it with one blow of a little paw.

  Chagatayev sat next to this camel for a long time, watching and understanding. Then he collected some armfuls of tumbleweed from quite a large area, and fed them to the camel. He couldn’t water it, for he had only two canteens of water for himself, but he knew that there were fresh water ponds and small wells farther along the Kunya-Darya riverbed. But it would be hard for him to carry the camel across the sand.

  Evening set in. Chagatayev fed the camel, bringing it grass from nearby patches, until the camel put its head down on the ground; it fell asleep with the heavy sleep of new life. Night fell, it began to grow cold. Chagatayev ate a flat cake from his knapsack, then drew close to the camel’s body in order to get warm, and began to drowse. He smiled; everything was strange to him in this world, as if it had been contrived for a quick and amusing game. But this special game was being dragged out endlessly, to all eternity, and no one wanted to laugh any longer, or could laugh. The empty land of the desert, the camel, even the wandering, sparse grass—all of this ought to be serious, big, and exultant. Does a feeling exist inside poor people of some other, happy, assignment, essential and indispensable, and is this why they feel so burdened, waiting for something? Chagatayev curled himself up around the stomach of the camel and fell asleep, lost in the wonder of reality.