The Exile

1. In the black yurt-2

As the sun climbed higher and higher over the steppe, the snow melted and turned gray. The mounds of snow, thawed as they were on the southern side, took on the peculiar shapes of white wolves sitting on their haunches. At midday their pointed muzzles dwindled as water dripped from them onto the ground. On one slope of the valley the earth had pushed out of the snow, and the first snow­drop burst into bloom. On her way from the river with a full water skin, Kuljan plucked the snowdrop and took it to the black yurt of old Shakir as she carried food there.

“That’s for you, Shakir Ata, the first flower. See how warm it is outdoors: snowdrops are blooming in the steppe,” she said, smiling kindly at the old herder. “Soon we’ll move to the jailiaou, but this year it’ll be a long trek, right to the river Illi where the mountains rise over the clouds and there are lots of berries and nuts and the grass is green and fresh the whole summer long.”

The girl wanted to cheer up the old man, but unwittingly she touched upon a secret and painful thought that had been troubling Shakir for a long time now. Since Shakir was not working, Djantemir would not give him either a horse, camel or even a scrawny gray donkey. Shakir’s old camel could barely carry the yurt, while his two-year-old colt had not been broken in yet, and there was no one to do it now. Traveling on foot was now out of the question for Shakir. How then would he get to the jailiaou? His strength was waning drop by drop every day. Besides, Jai­sak was still bad. A month and a half he had been lying motionless, the wound would not heal, although old Ab­dullah had set the bones pretty well and frequently rubbed the wound with a rust-red concoction of algae taken from the Aral Sea to disinfect it and make it heal faster. So where would he and his family go during the long and blistering hot summer in the steppe? Shakir thought with despair. Would they have to stay behind at the kistau as jataks to watch over Djantemir’s house and sheds and sow millet on the virgin lands?

Shakir fell to brooding as his toothless gums slowly chewed the mutton the girl had brought, and a heavy gloom gripped his heart. He realized that he was dying: not without reason had his mouth been suddenly filled with salty blood several times already, without him coughing or feeling any pain. At first he spat it out and covered the little red blotch with earth, but then he started swallowing the blood. Kumish, however, saw quite well that her hus­band was wasting away, and whenever the aul women inquired about his health she only sighed sadly.

After eating the last piece of mutton, Shakir wiped the bowl clean with his fingers, licked each finger, and gave the empty bowl back to Kuljan.

“Thank you, girl. Let your life be as bright and sunny as this first day of spring. Give my thanks to the bai for not forgetting an old man.”

Kuljan smiled in response, and taking the other bowl from Jaisak, slipped out of the yurt.

“A fine girl,” Shakir said musingly. “I wish you had such a wife, Jaisak. But the bai would hardly marry her to a beggar.”

“She is already engaged, ata. Soon her wedding will be held, I suppose. To tell you the truth, though, nothing’s been heard of her betrothed, as if he didn’t exist at all.”

The old man did not say anything in reply. He lay there and listened intently to the wheezing of his disease-ravaged chest, and recalled the years of long ago.

“You know, Jaisak,” he spoke suddenly, “there was a time when we were not that poor. I was born here, in the Great Steppe, and then moved to the Bukei’s Horde beyond the Urals. Djantemir would not have dared make me work for him then. I had a white yurt, big and fine. And I had two thousand sheep, a whole herd of camels, and two wives, older than your mother. It was a big family I had…”

“Yes, I know,” Jaisak remarked. “Apa told me about it. I even remember how we crossed a big, big river on sheaves of reed one dark night. And then,” Jaisak added uncer­tainly, “I seem to have had brothers. Yes, two brothers and a little sister with red ribbons in her plaits.” He looked inquiringly at his father.

Shakir kept silent.

“Yes, you had,” he said in a dull voice, at length, and propped himself up on his elbows with an effort, fastening the ragged robe at his chest. “I’ll tell you everything. You must know the truth.”

“In this steppe,” he began, frequently falling silent to regain his breath, “the pastures are poorer and drier than on the right bank of the Ural. The wet meadows there are quite rich, the grass juicy and dense, and along the Ahtub and the Caspian Sea there are boundless expanses of reed. Just the land to enjoy living in and growing prosperous. But wherever there is grass and reeds in plenty there are a lot of rich men with hordes of servants and tyulenguts, and even more cattle. They seize the best lands and pas­tures by force. When I was as young as you, we freely crossed the Ural to winter on the far bank, and came back here in spring. But with time the Russian czar prohibited the auls from the Great Steppe from moving to the right bank of the Ural.

“We were under the rule of Sultan Bukei then. He plead­ed with the czar to permit us to settle for good on the lands between the Ural and the Volga. The czar agreed, and we were happy at the news. Five thousand yurts moved across the Ural ‘to the rich lands.’ But our joy did not last long. As we learned, the shores of the Caspian with their fishing grounds and reeds had long belonged to Prince Yusupov and Count Bezborodko, and the lands be­tween the Uzen and the Ural was the domain of the Yayïk Cassacks. Bukei died then, but his son Jangoz and his father-in-law Karaul Hodja were people without either a sense of honesty or honor, or a heart. Apart from the czar’s usual taxes and zakat, he burdened us with a heap of other taxes. But we never had money, and traded just like we do now — for sheep, but not for money. Karaul Hodja came to an agreement with Yusupov, by which we were permit­ted to graze our herds on his lands for money. Whereas Yusupov’s price was two rubles, Karaul Hodja demanded that we pay five. We suffered from hunger, while he grew rich on our tears. Besides, aul after aul came pushing from the Great Steppe across the Ural to winter in our parts. Then came a terrible winter when snowstorms raged with­out end, followed by such glazed frost that no horse could smash the ice crust with its hoof. Day and night we were breaking the crust with ketmens and shovels, but half of our sheep flock still died. The rest could have been saved it we had been allowed to graze in the reeds, but the Yayïk Cossacks refused flatly. And we had no money to pay them…”

Shakir broke into a heavy cough and could not regain his breath for a long time. Then he continued his story, trying to vent his grief, which had been such a heavy bur­den for him to bear all his life.

“Our animals perished to the last lamb. Death from hunger stared us in the face. My older wives died that winter. Only Kumish, your mother, stayed alive. Just then a caravan arrived from Bukhara, with rice and flour for which we had neither sheep nor money to pay. Seeing our woe, the Bukharans started selling flour in return for children. Kumish and I went and did a horrible thing: we sold the elder children to save them from starvation and preserve the youngest child. They traded three bowlfuls of flour for a child. So we got nine bowlfuls. The boys sur­vived, but your sister died a day after she was sold. The Bukharans visited us with abuse, demanding that we give you away in her place. And so we decided to flee to our homeland — here, to the Great Steppe. The Russians did not let anyone across the Ural at that time. We had to cross it in the dead of night. But we had neither boat nor raft to do so. We cut dried reeds, covered our heads with hay, and waded into the water. You were put on a sheaf of reeds and covered with hay, too. In this way we were not spotted, because a lot of hay and brushwood washed off the wet meadows by the flood was drifting down the river then. We came to this place, to Djantemir’s aul. His father Undasin had once been a friend of mine, but he was dead by then. Djantemir received us well, like friends: he had a ram butchered, treated us to a meal, but when he learned that we were beggars… Oh well, you know yourself how we have been faring here —” Shakir stopped short.

Jaisak kept silent, but his tightly compressed lips showed clearly enough what intense bitterness and irrepressible hatred blazed in his heart.

“Listen to me, son,” Shakir spoke again, spitting a clot of blood out of his mouth. “If you ever come across a Bukharan caravan or get to Margelan, look for the mer­chant Habibula Omer there. He bought your brothers Kasim and Tyulenbai. And if fortune ever smiles on you, redeem them.”

“All right, ata, I will. I swear I will,” Jaisak said quietly, but firmly. “I’ll get myself a royal eagle for hunting. They say the Russians pay big money for furs. I’ll work hard. Don’t you worry, ata. I won’t let you die of hunger.”

“There is one more thing I want to tell you, son,” Shakir said quietly after a while. “Take care of our colt as you would of the apple of your eye. He’s born of Karligach, the light-footed mare, and” — he dropped his voice to a barely audible whisper — “of Blizzard, the very same Blizzard that wins every baiga. The colt is priceless, but he has to be fed better, brought up and broken in really well. You know how to handle a horse and teach it so it responds to your voice and understands you without a whip. A horse, mind you, is a reliable, trusty friend: both in trouble and at a baiga it’ll come to the help of its master. In it you will find your luck. I called the colt Abkozad, because when he’s grown up he’ll turn white as airan, and will be prized more than pure gold.”

Jaisak listened, without saying a word.

“Do you hear me, son? Will you do what I ask you?” Shakir said and feebly lowered himself onto the piece of felt.

“I hear you, ata! I’ll do everything you say, and my word is firm as an inscription on rock,” Jaisak replied.

The old man sighed with relief, as if he had thrown an overheavy burden off his chest, but then he recalled some­thing else and raised his head again.

“Djantemir, as you know, gives me ten sheep for a year’s work. In thirty years that could have made a whole flock, but he deducts from my earnings for every sheep and ewe lamb a wolf pack tears down. Now I’ve got forty-five sheep and seventy ewe lambs. Remember that and don’t let your memory grow rusty when he’s paying off the poor,” he finished, smiling with bitter irony.

Both lapsed into silence — Shakir, because the long talk had made him tired, Jaisak, because just then he was trying to stir his maimed fingers, and he sensed with joy that they were bending slightly, although a sharp pain stabbed him above the elbow or somewhere near the shoul­der blades.