Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

Chagatayev stood up on his feet, to get rid of sleep and this whole world sticking to the inside of his head like a prickly bush. Sleep flowed out of him, but all the strange thickness of memory and thought stayed alive in him even when he was awake. He saw something on a sand dune next to him, either an animal or a tent, but he couldn’t understand what it was, and he fell backwards out of weakness. And whatever it was on the neighboring sand dune, an animal or a tent or a machine, moved now into Chagatayev’s consciousness and boldly began to torment him, though he did not understand it or even have a name for it. This new phenomenon, tied in with all that had preceded it, overpowered Chagatayev, and he fell into unconsciousness again, to save his soul.

He woke early on the following day. The wind had disappeared without a trace, a shy silence stood all around him, so empty and so weak that a storm might suddenly have burst out inside it. The shadow of night moved up into the sky and lay there across the world, higher than the light of day. Chagatayev was well by now, his mind had cleared, and he thought about his problems as he had before; his weakness had not left him but it no longer tortured him. He foresaw that he would probably die here, and his people, too, would be lost as corpses in the desert. Chagatayev did not regret this for himself, his bigger nation would still be alive, and it would still bring general happiness to the unhappy, but it was hard that the Dzhan people, which stood in need of life and happiness more than all the other peoples of the Soviet Union, should be dead.

“It won’t be,” Chagatayev whispered.

He began to lift himself, pressing with all his body on his trembling hands placed flat against the sand, but immediately he fell back again: behind him, right behind the back of his neck, something was moving; Chagatayev could hear the quick, retreating steps of something alive.

Chagatayev closed his eyes and felt in his pocket for the handle of his revolver; now he was only afraid that he might not be able to cope with the heavy weapon because his hand had only a child’s strength left in it. He lay there for a long time, not moving, pretending to be dead. He knew about a lot of animals and birds which eat dead people on the steppes. Probably wild animals were moving in a long, unseen procession behind his people, eating those who fell. Sheep, his people, wild animals—this triple train was moving in order across the desert. But the sheep, having lost their accustomed grazing round, began sometimes to follow the wandering tumbleweed being blown by the wind, so the wind became the true guiding force, of everything from grass to men. Probably they should be following the wind, in order to catch up with the sheep, but Nur-Mohammed didn’t know anything, and Sufyan had become bored with living, and had stopped thinking.

Chagatayev wanted to jump up at once, shoot at the animal, kill it, and eat it, but he was afraid he might miss, out of weakness, and frighten the animal away for good. He decided to let the animal come right up to his body, and kill it at point-blank range.

Light, careful steps could be heard all this time behind Chaga-tayev’s head, now coming closer, now going away. Nazar waited, holding his breath, for this slinking thing to hurl itself upon him, not yet sure that he was dead. He worried only that the animal might sink its fangs into his throat at its first pounce, or that, wounded, it might run far away. He could now hear the little steps right next to his head. Chagatayev pulled the revolver a little more out of his pocket, feeling inside him a real strength compounded out of all the little scraps of life left in him. But the steps moved past his body, and went beyond. Nazar half-opened his eyes: just beyond his feet two enormous birds were walking, moving away toward a sand dune opposite him. Chagatayev had never seen such birds; they looked like the eagle-carrion vultures of the steppes and at the same time like wild, dark swans. Their beaks were like vultures’ beaks, but their thick, powerful necks were longer than those of eagles, and their solid legs carried high the delicate, airy bodies of true swans. The strong wings of one bird were a pure gray in color, while the other had blue, red, and gray feathers. This one was probably the female. Both birds seemed to have on trousers of snowy-white down. Even from one side, Chagatayev noticed little black spots on the female; these were fleas digging through the down into the stomach of the bird. Both birds looked like enormous nestlings which were not yet used to being alive, and were moving with extreme care.

The day had grown hot and dreary, little sandstorms were whirling across the surface of the sand, evening still stood high in the sky, above the light and the warmth. The two birds walked onto the sand dune opposite Chagatayev and looked at him with their thoughtful, farseeing eyes. Chagatayev watched the birds from under his half-closed eyelids, and he could see even the gray, thin color of their eyes as they looked at him full of thought and of attention. The female was cleaning the talons of its feet with its beak, and spitting out of its mouth some kind of old leavings, perhaps a remnant of the clawed-up Nazar-Shakir. The male rose into the air, but the female stayed where it was. The enormous bird flew low to one side, then soared upward with several flappings of its wings, and almost at once began to fall straight toward him. Chagatayev felt the wind in his face before the bird hit him. He could see its white, clean breast in front of his face, and its gray, clear eyes, not wicked but thoughtful, because the bird had now noticed that the man was alive, and watching it. Chagatayev lifted his revolver, held it with both hands, and fired straight at the head of the bird dropping down upon him. In the white down of the bird’s breast, blown out by the speed of its downward flight, a dark spot appeared, and then the wind blew all the down and wisps of feathers around the spot of the direct hit, and for a moment the body of the eagle held itself motionless in the air above him.

The bird closed its gray eyes, and then they opened by themselves, but they no longer saw anything—the bird was dead. It lay across Chagatayev’s body in the same position in which it had been falling, its breast against the man’s breast, its head on his head, burying its beak in Chagatayev’s thick hair, spreading wide its black, helpless wings on both sides of him, with its feathers and down strewed all over Chagatayev. Chagatayev himself fainted from the force of the blow, but he was not wounded; the bird had simply stunned him since the dangerous speed of its fall had been braked by the bullet. Chagatayev started up with sharp pain: the second bird, the female, had driven its beak into his right leg and having pulled out some of his flesh was flying off into the air. Chagatayev, holding the revolver with both hands again, fired twice but missed; the gigantic bird disappeared behind the sand dunes, and then he saw it flying away at a great height.

The dead eagle was no longer on top of Chagatayev, but lying on the sand at his feet. The female must have pushed it there in an effort to make sure that it was dead, and to say good-bye to it.

Chagatayev crawled over to the dead bird and began to eat at its throat, tearing the feathers away from it. The female eagle was still to be seen, but it had already climbed high up in the sky where the shadow of night, the dusk of dawn and sunset, stands even at full noon, and it seemed to Chagatayev that the bird would never come back, that there it had found the happy land in the air of all the birds that fly.

When he had eaten a little, Chagatayev tied one leg of the dead bird to his belt and he put the other end of the belt deep inside his trousers, so he would know it if some beast of prey tried to steal the eagle away from him. Then he treated the wound torn in his leg, wrapped it in cloth, and lay down quickly, in order to recover a little of his strength.