Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

“Of course,” the woman answered. “I’ve got nothing to wear, nor have you, either; how are we going to live in the winter?”

“When we’re sleeping, we’ll get warm,” the husband answered. “What more can we do, poor as we are?”

“There’s nothing else,” the woman agreed. “There’s not another thing you and I have that’s any good; I’ve thought and I’ve thought about it and I see only that I love you.”

“I love you, too,” the husband said, “otherwise there’d be no living…”

“There’s nothing cheaper than a wife,” the woman answered. “When we’re so poor, what do you own except my body?”

“We don’t have enough of anything,” the husband agreed. “Thank goodness a wife is born and raised all by herself; otherwise a man would never get one. You have breasts, and lips, a stomach, your eyes can see, and most of all I think about you and you think about me, and the time goes by…”

They grew quiet. Chagatayev cleaned the wax out of his ears and tried hard to listen—would he hear something more from where the husband and wife were lying?

“You and I have plenty of what’s bad,” the woman began again. “You’re thin, and without much strength, and my breasts have dried up, my bones hurt inside me…”

“I’ll love whatever’s left of you,” the husband said.

Then they grew silent for good; probably they were embracing each other, so as to hold in their hands their only happiness.

Chagatayev whispered something to himself, smiled, and fell asleep, content that happiness should exist between two people in his native land, even in a poor way.

In the morning Gulchatai paid no attention to her son or to the young girl he had brought with him. Her strength of spirit had been just strong enough to recognize him when he was sleeping on the grass by the trail next to Aidim; now she was living her own life alone again. There was nothing to be done inside the hut, but for a long time the mother evened up the stems of the reeds in the sloping walls, collected all the wisps of grass, cleaned the inside of the cooking pot, straightened out and rolled up the reed mat, and did all this with the utmost concentration and zeal, anxious that her household goods should be intact because she had no other links at all with life or with other people. Since a person needs something to be thinking about all the time, it was clear that she was imagining something while she worked at her small, almost useless, tasks; she didn’t know how to think without working; the cooking and the hut, while she picked it up, gave her memories, filling her weak, empty heart with feeling.

She asked her son to give her something. She asked this timidly, without hope and without greed, just so she might have a few more things and increase, by having them, her involvement with the world—the time of her living would go better. Nazar understood his mother, and he gave her his raincoat, the holster of his revolver (he put the revolver in his trouser pocket), a notebook, and forty rubles in money, and he instructed her at the same time to provide food for Aidim. But the girl went off herself to collect grasses for soup, and Gulchatai stayed at the hut.

“Do you know Molla Cherkezov?” Nazar asked her.

“I know everybody,” his mother told him.

“Well then, go over there, live with him, it will be better for you. He’s blind, but he’ll take care of you until he dies.”

The bent-over old woman stared at the ground; she could not understand why Cherkezov needed her since her heart was already beating not with emotion but simply out of habit, and since life had become for her almost imperceptible. But she went, taking nothing with her from her home except the things her son had just given her, and these only because they happened to be in her hands. It looked as if she didn’t like her older belongings any longer because she didn’t have enough strength of spirit to be greedy for them.

Chagatayev stayed behind to live with Aidim, hoping that his mother’s heart would be warmed by living with Molla Cherkezov. Aidim began right away to run the place, collecting and boiling grasses, catching fish, cooking the food for dinner. One time she walked far beyond the channels of the river and the area it flooded, all the way to a grove of leafless trees growing in the desert, and brought back firewood as a reserve against the winter. Then Chagatayev, too, went to this grove a couple of times and brought back wood, and he forebade the girl to go—she was supposed just to kindle a little fire in the stove inside the hut and to fix a pot of soup every day. But soon he had to do the household work all alone, because Aidim fell ill and was hot, burning, soaked with perspiration. Nazar covered her with grass against chills, wiped her parched eyes, and poured into her thin soup made of the grasses, but the young girl could not cope with the disease, and grew thin, silent, headed straight for death. Her eyes looked at Chagatayev without consciousness, she had nothing to think about to console her. Chagatayev sat with her through long, empty days, and tried to protect the sick girl from grief and fear.

There were sick and helpless people lying in the other huts and tents. Chagatayev figured that there were forty-seven persons in the Dzhan people, and of these twenty were sick. There were eleven women, and only three children under twelve, including Aidim. The women, who were the hardest workers, died first of all, and those left alive gave birth to children very rarely.

While Aidim was sick, the commissioner of the district government, Nur-Mohammed, came to see Chagatayev. Chagatayev told him he had been sent here to help his people, whom he was to make happy, progressive, and more numerous. Nur-Mohammed answered him that the people’s hearts had long ago sickened in their hunger, that their minds had gone deaf, and that there was therefore nothing left with which happiness might be felt. Better to leave these poor people in peace, forget them forever, or else lead them off somewhere in the wilderness, in the steppes and the mountains, so that they might get lost for good, and then be considered nonexistent.

Chagatayev looked at Nur-Mohammed for a little while: he was a big man, already old, his eyes looked out through tightly cut eyelids as if through constant pain. He wore an Uzbek robe, with a skullcap on his head, and his shoes were felt slippers—the only man among the whole people who had kept such clothing. This was explained by the fact that Nur-Mohammed was not himself a member of the Dzhan people but had been sent to them six months before, and he looked at the people with a stranger’s eyes.

“What have you done in this half year?” Chagatayev asked him.

“Nothing,” Nur-Mohammed reported. “I can’t resurrect the dead.”

“Then what are you hanging around for? Why are you here?”

“When I came, this people numbered a hundred and ten persons, now there are fewer. I dig graves for the dead—it’s impossible to bury them in the swamp, it would cause an epidemic—so I carry the dead ones far away into the sandy desert. I’ll go on burying them until they’re all gone, then I’ll go away myself, and I’ll report: my mission is accomplished….”

“The people can bury its own—you’re not needed for that.”

“No, they won’t bury them, I know.”

“Why won’t they?”

“The dead should be buried by the living, and there are no living here, just those who haven’t died yet, living out their time in sleep. You won’t make happiness for them, they don’t even know their own grief now, they don’t worry any longer because they’ve been worried out.”

“What are we to do with you?” Chagatayev asked.