The Fierce and Beautiful World

by Andrei Platonov

  “Where are you going?” Chagatayev said with all the strength he had.

  Aidim was crying in Nur-Mohammed’s arms.

  “Keep me here, Nazar Chagatayev… I don’t want to go to Afghanistan, there are bourgeois living there….”

  Where had she learned about bourgeois?… Chagatayev did not fall down again, some triumphal force of life came back to him, he raised his revolver in his stiffening arm and ordered Nur-Mohammed to stop. The latter saw the weapon, and started to run. Aidim had noticed a sore on Mohammed’s neck, and she dug her long fingernails into it. Nur-Mohammed cried out in a terrible voice and struck the girl in the face, but there was no way for him to swing his arm, and his blows did not hurt her much. Aidim did not take her hand away from the sore and was swinging now around his neck, and he stopped holding her so that he could manage to hit her harder.

  “Look, how it hurts you!” Aidim said. “We told you not to steal, that you mustn’t. But you stole, you bandit! You suffer now, go on and suffer!”

  Thick blood began to ooze out of Nur-Mohammed’s sore. By now Aidim had pulled the dry scab completely off the sore.

  Nur-Mohammed gave a loud groan, and finally managed to drop the girl. Having glanced at Chagatayev, he picked Aidim up and ran with her again; he didn’t want to have worked for nothing. Chagatayev could not shoot straight at him for fear of killing Aidim whom Mohammed was now holding in front of his chest, so he fired at his legs. The bullet hit him. Nur-Mohammed was lifted off the ground like some strange and useless object, and he fell in a dive with his shoulder toward the sand, and he might well have crippled Aidim. But she managed to jump away as he fell, and she picked herself up and ran to Nazar. Chagatayev wanted to fire again, to destroy Mohammed, but he had too few bullets and he needed to save them, to hunt so he could feed his people.

  Nur-Mohammed lay on the sand for a few seconds and then jumped up and ran away, scrambling up the steep slope of a sand dune like a strong and healthy man. He was crying with pain as he ran, because the movement had torn his wound open wider, but he did not hear his own crying. He vanished behind the sand hill and his voice was silenced forever for Chagatayev. Aidim stood there in amazement, looking after Nur-Mohammed. She was wondering if he would die quickly or not.

  Then she walked back with Chagatayev.

  “Go quickly!” she said. “Lie down on the sand again, before the birds come back, or we’ll have nothing to eat!”

  Feeling weaker and weaker, Chagatayev walked back to the place where he had been lying, and fell back on the sand again. Aidim went back to the tribe at its stopping place. The day was still young, but all the people were already lying down, to hoard their lives in sleep, wrapped up in what was left of their clothing.

  Chagatayev found himself alone in his sandy pass. He tried to think only about what was absolutely essential to the life of his people and their salvation. The eagle had flown away again, alive and unhappy. If he had killed its mate the first time, then what had he shot the second time? Probably a second mate… No, with birds it doesn’t work like that; this meant it must have been a friend or relative of the first male, perhaps a brother summoned by the female to help in wreaking vengeance. Now that the brother was dead, too, where would the female turn for help? If no other bird could be found now, beyond the horizon or high in the sky, to help in the fight, then the female would come back alone. Chagatayev was convinced of this. From childhood he had known the feelings of wild animals and birds. They cannot cry, to find in tears and in exhaustion of the heart both comfort for themselves and forgiveness of their enemy. Instead they must act, seeking to wear out their suffering in struggle, in the dead body of their enemy or else in their own destruction.

  During his second life in the desert it had seemed to Chagatayev that he was always going somewhere, farther and farther away. He began to forget details about the city of Moscow; Ksenya’s face stayed in his memory only in a general way, not as something living—he regretted this and strained his imagination to see her sometimes in his mind’s eye as she really was; when he could fix her face in his memory, he always noticed that her lips were whispering something to him, but he didn’t understand and couldn’t hear her voice across the great distance. Her different-colored eyes watched him with surprise, and perhaps with sorrow that he was not coming back for a long time. But he felt this was only flattering himself. Actually, Ksenya had probably forgotten Chagatayev completely; she was still a child, and her heart was crowded with the fine life she was still creating for herself, and there was not room enough in it to keep all the impressions disappearing past her.

  The day passed painfully, bringing no relief. Chagatayev knew that he couldn’t feed his people just by killing one or two more birds, but he was not a great man and he couldn’t think out what to do now that might be more realistic. Maybe his hunting the birds was an insignificant affair, but it was the only thing possible until his exhaustion had been overcome. With the strength he had had before, he would have scoured the desert for tens of kilometers around them, he would have found the wild sheep and driven them back here. With just one man in shape to walk fifty or a hundred kilometers to a telegraph station, he would have summoned help from Tashkent. Perhaps an airplane might appear in the sky above him! No, they didn’t fly here ever, because so far no treasures had been found in the ground on which to waste a valuable machine. And this wretched, almost useless task, requiring chiefly patience in pretending to be a corpse, still comforted Chagatayev, but he made up his mind to go on the next day with his people to their homeland, to Sari-Kamish, no matter what happened.

  He drowsed off. The world again alternated in front of him—now lively, full of light and noise, now fading away into dark oblivion.

  In the evening Chagatayev heard confusing sounds. He got ready, thrusting his right hand under his back, where his revolver was lying. He was wrong: this had not been the noise of eagles flying. His mother had come up to him, carrying her head low, touching his body with her hands and looking hard with her eyes at all the sand around him, at the ground where he was lying. She wasn’t checking to see if her son was alive or dead, she was searching with her all but blind eyes for more dead birds. Strange creaking sounds came from his mother’s body; the dry bones of her skeleton moved only with difficulty and with pain. Gulchatai went away slowly, helping herself to move by holding the ground with her hands and pulling at the sand.

  Soon Chagatayev heard these same sounds of moving bones again. He fought down sleep and concentrated on them. Something was moving beyond the sandy crossing of the hill where he was lying. Old Vanka was looking at him from there, next to him stood Sufyan who had obviously climbed up the hill from the other side, then he saw someone else’s indistinguishable face, and there, too, were Aidim and even Molla Cherkezov although he could not see the light. The human faces gradually grew more numerous, and they were all looking at Chagatayev. Chagatayev looked at them, too. Only the thought of food had brought them here, but this thought was not clear or sharp, as with ordinary men, but something guileless, capable of remaining unsatisfied without becoming bitter.

  What did these people expect from Chagatayev? Could they really eat their fill on one or even two more birds? No. But their grief might turn into gladness if each one could receive a shredded piece of the meat from a bird. It would serve not to fill them up, but to unite them in a common life and with each other, it would give them a feeling of reality, and they would remember their own existence. Eating could serve at the same time to nourish the human spirit and also to make sunken, quiet eyes shine again, and see the light of the sun spread out across the earth. It seemed to Chagatayev that all mankind, if it had been standing there in front of him, would have looked at him in the same way, ready and waiting to delude itself with false hopes, to carry on the delusion, once more to begin its various unavoidable ways of living.

  Chagatayev smiled; he knew that grief and suffering are only ghosts and dreams, that even Aidim could destroy them with h
er child’s strength; an unreleased happiness, not yet tested, goes on beating in the heart and in the world, as in a cage, and every man feels its power, and its drawing near. Soon now he would change the destiny of his people. Chagatayev waved his hand to them. Aidim understood, and told them all to go away, so as not to bother Chagatayev in his hunting.

  At the start of night, when all the people had dozed off, Aidim went out alone into the desert to look for the wild sheep. First she told Sufyan and Stari Vanka to dig with their hands in a small depression between two long sand dunes. There she had found clay under the sand, and this ought to hold water, and she had already drunk a little of it from the hole. She remembered, too, that when there is nothing to eat, water can also nourish.

  [14]

  The night moved across the sand. Chagatayev was sleeping on his right side, filled with dreams which drove out his thirst, his hunger, his weakness, and all his suffering. He was dancing in a garden, lighted by electric lights, with a grown-up Ksenya, on a summer night smelling of the earth and of childhood, just before the dawn already burning on the very tops of the poplar trees like a faraway voice which could not yet be heard. Ksenya was tired in his careful arms, her eyes closed as if she were asleep. With the dawn a wind came through the trees out of the east to rustle the dresses of the dancing women. The music played, and the early light and the wind moved across the faces of the quiet, happy people. Then the music stopped, it grew quite light around them, and Chagatayev was carrying Ksenya in his arms. Suddenly he saw darkness where there had been light, his head ached, and, falling, he turned onto his back as he fell, so as not to hurt Ksenya whom he was holding in front of him like a little child: let her fall on top of him and not be injured. He grabbed at her, but she was no longer there. He cried out and jumped up from the ground into the darkness, and two sharp blows, on his head and on his chest, knocked him back again.

  The big birds, falling onto him and then rising into the air, struck him with their beaks and tore his clothing and his body with their claws. Chagatayev tried to get on his feet, but he couldn’t and he was losing strength from the pain and from new blows by the heavy birds falling onto him. He turned over and dug his hands hardened by despair into the sand surrounded by the desert night and soaked with his last blood. He wanted to scream, so as to pull up some desperate strength from what was left of his ebbing life deep inside him, but the stinging blows of the eagles’ beaks and their claws ripping his tendons choked his cry before he could fill his lungs. The beating of their wings made a wind, and he couldn’t breathe in this storm, and he was choking from the down and the feathers of the birds. Chagatayev realized that the first two blows of their beaks had hit him in the head near the back of his neck, where blood was now flowing down his neck, and one of the nipples on his chest, it seemed, had also been ripped and this wound hurt him with a tickling, aching pain.

  Finally Chagatayev managed to get to his feet for a moment. He stretched out his arms, ready to grab the first bird which fell on him and to strangle it in his hands. The eagles were in the air, picking up momentum to dive on him. His foot stepped on his revolver, and he leaned down to pick it up, but couldn’t lift it. The birds dove onto his back, but by now his head had cleared and he was able to figure, from the number of new beak wounds he got, that there were three eagles. Chagatayev, when he had picked up his revolver, threw himself backwards trying to shake off or to knock down the bird fastened to his back, but he threw his weight badly, and fell down awkwardly on his side, and the eagles flew off to one side. Chagatayev tried to raise himself for a better aim and all the exhausted bones in his body scraped against each other, just like the bones of the people in his tribe. He heard it, and he felt sorry for his body and its bones—once upon a time his mother had put them together out of the poverty of her own flesh, not from love or passion, not from delight or enjoyment, but from the most everyday kind of necessity. He felt himself to be some alien property, like the last possession of poor people which they want to squander to no good purpose, and this feeling drove him to a terrible fury. Chagatayev sat down firmly on the sand. The eagles, without even rising to any great height, rushed down on him again at great speed, their wings held tightly to their bodies. He let them come close, and then he pulled the trigger. Chagatayev could see the eagles clearly this time, there were three of them, and now he was firing accurately, coldbloodedly, saving himself as if he were another person, a close friend who needed help. He fired five bullets almost point-blank at the birds rushing down at him. With a whistling of air the birds flew low over him, unable to check their momentum because they were either dead or fatally wounded. They fell some meters beyond Chagatayev on the dark night sand.

  Chagatayev was shuddering with anxiety and exhaustion. He dug a little trench in the sand and lay down in it, squeezing his body in to get warm and to go to sleep, without worrying about how much blood would flow out of his wounds while he slept, not even thinking about them or whether he would live.

  Aidim walked a long way that night, and then she grew tired, lay down, and fell asleep, without having heard Chagatayev’s shots. But remembering that she must not sleep long, she soon woke up and anxiously walked on farther. A poor, late-rising moon came up out of the earth a great distance away, and threw its low light across the sand. Aidim looked around her with searching eyes. She knew it was impossible that nothing should exist on the earth around her. If one walks across the desert for a whole day, one will inevitably meet or find something; either water, or sheep, or one will see a lot of birds, somebody’s lost donkey will turn up or various animals will run by. Older people had told her that there are just as many good things in the desert as in any country, no matter where, but there are few people, and this is why it seems as if nothing else exists. And Aidim didn’t even know that there was any land richer or better than the desert sand or the reed thickets in the flood waters of the Amu-Darya River.

  Aidim stood on the highest sand dune; the twinkling, glimmering moonlight drew her in one direction—everywhere else the light moved easily but in this one place something was blocking it. She walked to where the light was darker and soon she could make out a little baby lamb. The lamb was scratching with its legs on the very top of a small sand hill and throwing up the sand in such a way that from a distance, seen through the darkness and across the spectral hilly desert, it looked like something important and mysterious going on.

  The lamb was probably digging up blades of grass which had been buried in the spring, and eating them. Aidim quietly climbed up the dune and grabbed the lamb. It did not struggle, for it knew nothing about men. Aidim threw it down and wanted to bite through its weak little throat, to drink its blood and then to eat it. But then she noticed, right under the hill, a lot of sheep breathing heavily like people and digging with their front feet into the sand, trying to get at wetness hidden somewhere beneath them. Aidim let the lamb go and ran down from the dune to the flock of sheep. Before she got to them, a ram jumped up and stood stock-still in front of her, its head lowered for a fight. Aidim sat there for a while, facing the ram, and she thought in her small mind about what she should do now. She counted the flock; there were twenty-four of them including the lamb and two goats which were also living there. She crawled quietly up to the nearest sheep; the ram moved with her expectantly. With her hand Aidim felt the sand in the hole the sheep had been digging—it was dry, there was no wetness to be felt at all. A spume of tiredness was on the lips of the nearest sheep, sometimes they snapped at the sand with their mouths and then dropped it together with the last of their saliva. The sand was not watering them, but sopping up the last liquid in them. Aidim walked up to the ram; he was not very thin, but he was breathing heavily from thirst. Aidim took him by the horns, and pulled him along behind her. The ram went at first, then stopped to think about it, but Aidim tugged at him and the ram followed her. Some of the sheep lifted their heads and stopped working to follow the girl and the ram. The other sheep, and the goats, too, quickly
caught up with them.

  Aidim pulled the ram along in a hurry. Her memory for places was exact, but it was only at daybreak, with the moon extinguished in the sky, that she reached the deep depression where she had dug water for herself from the sand. She left the flock there, the sheep starting to paw the sand again with their front legs, and she went on to the sleeping place of her people. She was resentful that not a single water hole had been dug. Sufyan and Stari Vanka had either died or turned lazy, or perhaps they had drunk enough for themselves without worrying about the lives of the others.

  At the stopping place Aidim felt all the sleeping, unconscious people: they were still used to living, they were breathing, not one of them had died. Aidim woke up Sufyan and Stari Vanka and told them to pasture and guard the sheep, and she went off herself to Chagatayev, to bring him back to the camp to eat.

  For a long time Chagatayev did not waken when Aidim tried to rouse him; he was slowly dying because his blood had been trickling out of him while he slept and now it could be seen coming out of his wounds in infrequent little spurts and then drying in the sand. Aidim understood it all. She ran back to the place where her people had been sleeping, but they were all moving off to the flock of sheep in whatever way they could: some crawling, some barely getting to their feet, some managing only with the help of others. Aidim searched with her eyes to see which of them had a relatively whole or soft piece of clothing left, but she couldn’t find what she wanted. All their clothing was either thin and bad, or there was very little of it. Molla Cherkezov had a pair of soft wide trousers but because of his blindness they were not clean. Aidim took off her own shirt and looked at it: never mind, she was still a little girl, she hadn’t picked up the infections and the diseases of the older people, the shirt smelled only of sweat and of her body and there was no dirt on it—for the desert is a clean place. Aidim went back to Chagatayev, tore her shirt into strips, and bandaged all the wounds on his body and his head which were still bleeding.