День, когда рухнул мир - [16]

„Oh yes, we are slowly dying,“ said my friend’s sister, when we were sitting round the dinner table. „Here, we’ve been told to keep quiet about the underground tests which are being carried out. And it’s happening right under our feet! Where didn’t I write! But no one replied. I know that American women in the state of Nevada have sit-in demonstrations. They have asked us to support their movement with peaceful demonstrations near the Semipalatinsk proving ground, but it’s unlikely that we would be given permission to do this.“ She could not bear it; she was breathless from the rush of words and began to cry quietly. Her husband put his hand on her bony shoulder, trying to calm her. The boy without hands gazed at us vacantly. He drew closer to his mother and she immediately calmed down, understanding that he was hungry. She put a piece of meat into his mouth and fed him broth.

„You try and demonstrate near the proving ground – afterwards, you wouldn’t even find a trace of human bones. Everyone remembers what it was like in Alma-Ata in the winter, during those events. I am ready to die, I try to die, but what will happen to these unfortunate cripples? They’re innocent. I’ll be straight with you. You’re a writer. You know that our people are familiar with firing squads and arrests. Perhaps it’s better to die than to live like this! And where do we go for justice? It’s a long way to Moscow. Our youngest brother disappeared after the December events in Alma-Ata and we still don’t know whether he is alive or not…“

Suddenly, the new-born baby in the suspended cradle began to cry terribly. The five-year-old armless boy quickly climbed down off the stool and began to rock the cradle with his shoulder.

„A curse upon them!“ said the woman. „A curse upon them! When he starts to cry like that it means that they’ll soon start to explode their accursed bombs again. It’s as if they wait until we go to sleep. But he always senses the coming explosion. Can you hear how he’s sobbing?“

The little boy cried louder and louder.

„Aysha, feed him, perhaps he’s hungry,“ said the shepherd quietly and turned to us. „Please, you have hardly had anything to eat.“

There was a gentle apologetic smile upon his face, the courageous, weathered face. Aysha took her son into her arms. I was horrified. The little boy’s crown was almost wide-open and there something was pulsating, throbbing, alive. I rushed outside. A large, shaggy dog, who was getting under my feet, was good-naturedly barking at something in the distance. I walked across the dark yard and threw up round a corner. What is happening to us? What abyss are we falling into? Why are we bringing the end of the world closer, with our own hands?

At that moment, the earth trembled and we heard a muffled roar. The little one was right. They have started IT again. The little one was right.

A horse was tethered to the rail. He stood stock-still as if nothing special was happening in the world. But when I went up to him and stroked his body, the body of a working beast, accustomed to all kinds of hardships, he gratefully put his head on my shoulder; the horse breathed into my ear as if he was whispering some secret words known only to him.

In the mountains, a lone wolf began to howl.

Several barking dogs rushed towards the mountains.

In the sky, there were neither stars nor moon. Heavy clouds, hanging low over the foothills, increased the sensation of an oppressive darkness.

Pitch blackness. I could not see anything.

In the house, the boy incessantly cried. He must have gone mad even before he appeared into the world.

And I too felt that. I would go mad only from the thought of what was happening.

I was unable to close my eyes till the morning. And the house was silent. The master and mistress and my friend had fallen asleep, and the little one, next to whom my bed was laid out, had calmed down.

Memories, thoughts, like wild horses, trampled over me. In that deathly silence, I lay muttering fiercely and agrily:

„No, it won’t be my fate to lie quietly in my grave when I die. When I die, let them scatter my ashes over the steppe and in my native Genghiztau. That is my one and only request. As long as sorrow and suffering are my people’s fate, I will not rest. I will not rest!“

My eyes wide-open, I stared into the darkness; I had the sensation of being scattered through my native land by the wind, like warm ashes. The ashes – the remains of the body – but what of the soul? Where does my soul fly? Will it meet the soul of little Kenje in the universe? Will our souls merge? Tell me, Father.

Father, tell me, Father, why the death of several generations, the killing of the best sons and daughters of the nation does not open the eyes of the living, does not compel them to cherish the honour and glory of our homeland?

If only the blind would open their eyes! Where is their lost vision? The wailing of the millions of those who have disappeared, perished and been tormented, fills the land. And my hot ashes, cooled by the wind, will never know whether the blind will begin to see.