Anatoly Izotov - Cleopatra Hunting

The sand in this time of year is fresh, nice to look at and to touch; it seems life-giving and fertile. Indeed, if you look closely at its surface, you can see the tiny little needles of grass and even tinier, smaller than a millet grain, white and blue flowers, piercing through the reddish soil moved by an unknown, miraculous force.

The ravines are especially spectacular at this time, especially in those places where the narrow hollow-ways join them back to back. Here, they seem to escape the wrinkled mountains right into the flat plain and turn into the wide channels of mythical creeks and streams, with bottoms strewn with coarse sand and gravel, their oval banks covered with spongy loess. On this soft, dry soil, the tiny flowers are growing densely, forming conglomerations of fanciful pink, green and white patterns, resembling flower beds in the parks of southern cities, those embellished with dates and slogans. Vibrant green islands of plant life can be seen on the pink rocks of the granite massif, towering above the plain. Its ancient stones are already stricken by a mesh of cracks, formed under the influence of tectonic processes and weathering; in the course of the winter, they’ve accumulated the scant moisture, and the grass found it, sending down its clingy roots and fibers into the granite.

On the plain, on the slopes of the hills and in the hollows you can come across small clearings of orange tulips: they are smaller than the garden variety, but they are pretty to look at, too. There are also white mushrooms in the desert, their stout hats ungainly spreading along the infirm sand as if someone scattered pieces of melted cheese with the careless hand, and now it dries and cracks under the rays of the scorching sun. People say that five years ago the tulips covered the desert in a thick carpet in the spring, and the mushrooms were there in spades. It is easy to believe that, because even in the first year of her stay here, Maya found both mushrooms and tulips in the neighborhood, when she wandered alone through the strange, never-before-seen lands. Now, urban folks have to drive tens of kilometers out of the city to get mushrooms and flowers.

In April, the air is clear, the sun does not burn yet, and the desert tan is every bit as good as the seaside one. For Maya, every April weekend was a holiday. With a book and a little cold water in a thermos, she went to the mountains and there, hiding out in some dead gorge, she would strip naked and bathe in the gentle sunlight. Within two or three days, her skin acquired a pleasant golden-bronze color, much to everyone’s surprise during her future holidays at the seaside.

Once, when she was sunbathing on a small plateau near the watershed, Maya discovered a way to feel the infinity of the universe. In order to attain that feel, she had to lie on top of the mountain so as to see the sky everywhere: not only above, but also from the sides and under her body, and imagine that the Earth is just a small ball, and she lies on it and covers up most of it with her back. And then she would start to feel her body hovering in the real emptiness, surrounding her from all sides, with neither top, nor bottom, nor end, nor edge. And this space is not imaginary, no, it is right here, by her side! Infinity begins already where the flat surface of the warm granite ends, she could feel it there, she could feel it below, under her body, and everywhere else – on the left, on the right and at the center; bang! And you are floating effortlessly and flying into the azure abyss…

In spring, the most numerous, and, perhaps, the dominant inhabitants of the desert come to life – the turtles. In Maya’s opinion, these did not dwindle in numbers in the last few years. In April, the turtles can be found everywhere. They are crawling slowly through the sand, rolling over its thin ripples, dropping into building pits, falling under the wheels and caterpillars of passing cars, but, nevertheless, keep moving steadily towards their favorite pastures. There are huge turtles, of the size of an entire telephone set, with a roughened thick shell and deep black and yellow patterns pressed into it as though made with a powerful pressing engine. Their paws are thick and strong, with a comb of blunt, blue claws. This large reptile is very catious: at the sight of humans, it quickly hides its head and paws in its shell, keeping them inside even when being turned on its back, which is the most uncomfortable position for a turtle. These giants usually become the prey of connoisseurs of pilaf and turtle soup.

There is, however, a rarer, smaller variety of turtles with a soft bluish shell. Like all kids, they are very energetic and careless, and never hide their heads after falling into human hands. Children capture them, bring them home to play, walk with them, feed them grass and green onions. But, in the end, a turtle held in captivity dies.

The medium-sized turtles – the most common ones – are used in the production of ashtrays – the exotic souvenirs of the desert. Maya was not keen of their look: the imprint of a spinal column on the inner side of their shell made her cringe and immediately recall the barbaric way of killing animals: once she saw an electric welder familiar to her plucking bloodied flesh that was still alive out of the corneous carapace with a steel electrode…

The abundance of turtles soon becomes habitual: they cease to catch the eye and stop to be seen as living creatures. The shell of the desert tortoise is not strong enough: it cannot even withstand the weight of a car, bursting, exploding with blue intestines, quickly drying out and dissipating under the hot air and sand, while shell fragments turn white and lay there under the scorching sun for a long time, without causing neither irritation, nor regret. The turtles are getting killed not only by fans of their sweet meat and lovers of patterned ashtrays but also by anybody and everybody, who do it just for fun, because the animals are mute, because they can be kicked, whacked with a stone or dropped on asphalt, thrown into the water (now, let’s see if they can swim!), put on hot coals (will they manage to get out in time?) No one protects turtles and no one stands up for them, as though they are complete outsiders in this desert…

By the end of April, the air becomes unbearably hot, as the plants quickly wilt, dry up and become scarce. Here and there, you can only see smooth, as if polished by the glass-dust, stalks of dried ferrule, that stand up like white bones covered with sand dust. The turtles also disappear: they burrow into the sand and sleep until the next spring. The active life of turtles lasts for ten to twelve days a year. For such a short period of time, people never get a chance to wipe them out, so, all the cruelty of civilization notwithstanding, most of these reptiles manage to lay eggs, stock up calories and fall into a long hibernation, in order to appear a year later and once again indulge in plowing the hot sand with their clumsy paws.

The desert fades and becomes hotter and hotter. In May, the sun-warmed land no longer has time to cool down overnight. It becomes infernally hot: somewhere between forty and forty-five degrees Celsius in the shade every day.

Hot, hot, hot! The breeze does not refresh, it just comes in heat waves, each one of them hotter than the one preceding it. Sometimes, it seems that the heart would fail under this infinite heat buildup and break out of the chest cage. The nerves get frayed; the body gets soft and flabby. Sweat pours in buckets – the face, neck, and back are constantly wet… The handled objects quickly become wet and slippery. Salty sweat makes scratches sting, tickles the swollen eyelids, and corrodes the metal in areas where it is most often touched by the naked hand. The iron gets hot and sears the skin the same way it would burn in the biting frost. The skin pores get wide open, like windows, and you constantly feel them exude the excess heat, removing it from the body. If you decide to take a cool bath, then you’d better stay there as long as possible, because, until the moment you sweat again in the open air, you will suffer from internal stuffiness, the terrible pressure growing in every cell, bursting from within, like a premonition of a heat stroke. Sometimes you cannot stand it and just start running round in circles, not knowing where to hide or find shelter from this endless heat.