Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

Gulchatai felt no sorrow over her son, she had forgotten him. She walked along behind the others, bent over, feeling the sand with her hands whenever it seemed to her that something desirable might be lying on it. Molla Cherkezov hung on to Gulchatai by her clothing, trying all the time to remember that he was still alive. Nur-Mohammed, with despair in his heart, held on to Aidim’s hand; it was his plan to train this girl and fatten her so he could use her as a wife and then sell her to someone else. It worried him that there were too few women in the Dzhan tribe and that those who were still among the living had grown decrepit—there was hope only for Aidim because she was still a little girl. Women were priced higher than men because they could be used both for work and for love, although men could also be sold profitably in Afghanistan if they didn’t die on the long trip.

On the morning when Chagatayev did not show up at the general stopping place, Nur-Mohammed smiled and made a detailed entry about the disappearance in his notebook. He was sure that Chagatayev had run away to save himself, as anyone would who had life and little courage, and Nur-Mohammed felt better without him. The people no longer kept on asking him if they would arrive soon at Sari-Kamish, and they never remembered now about eating. Nur-Mohammed himself might perish out of weakness, but he still had old reserves inside him because he had eaten a lot of rice and meat and fruit while he was living in the oases and when he had gone secretly into Afghanistan to see the Khan, Dzhunaid, who had run away a long time ago.

Sufyan started to walk on this day with the wind, with the broken-off spears of dead grass and the tumbleweed; he knew that this was the direction the sheep must now have taken, once the wind had blown away without a trace their grazing path along which, in spots around old oases, some stable grass could grow. The rest of the people would have followed Sufyan, but Nur-Mohammed ordered them to walk in the opposite direction— against the wind, toward the southeast. He pulled Aidim closer, trying to feel her breasts which were just starting to grow, but all he could feel was her thin ribs.

Nur-Mohammed looked at them all; the people were rocking in the wind, the sandy blast along the ground was beating against their legs, dead grass was flying in the faces of the walking people—the wind was ripping the grass out of the sandy wasteland by its roots with overpowering force. Some people fell down from the wind, others walked along in sleep, scattering in different directions, losing each other in the darkness of the blowing sand.

Nur-Mohammed stopped.

The wind was now blowing out of the southeast with the steady, oppressive strength of some great machine. The people were scattered by it and they no longer heard, or else they didn’t recognize, Nur-Mohammed’s voice calling each of them by name to follow him. He was panting himself, from impatience, from thirst and from hunger; his mind was already darkening under the shadow of indifference to his own fate. He had been planning until now to lead this insignificant, exhausted tribe into Afghanistan, and to sell it there in slavery to the old Khan, so that he might live out his happy life somewhere in an Afghan valley on the bank of a stream, in his own place filled with the good things of life. But now Mohammed saw, as he was all but swept off his feet by the wind and the sand, that the Dzhan people would either perish or be dispersed in unconsciousness: each person’s body had grown empty, and his heart was gradually dying. They would not get as far as Afghanistan, or if they did they would not be able to serve even as the lowest kind of farmhands, because now they no longer had that small desire to live which is essential even for a slave.

Nur-Mohammed stood for a long time while the people were scattering in the darkness of the wind and lying where they had fallen in death or in sleep. Aidim wrapped herself around his neck, breathing quietly in her own oblivion. Mohammed held her carefully, and he watched the dying people with satisfaction, forgetting that he, too, wanted to drink and to eat. Sufyan sat down on the sand and collapsed. Gulchatai had been lying on the ground for a long time, with her blind husband, Cherkezov, folded against her on the side away from the wind as if he were trying to make himself comfortable with her in a bed. The Karakalpak nicknamed Tagan, who was thin but not very old, took off his clothes, his trousers and his robe, threw them into the wind, and buried himself naked in the sand so he could hardly be seen. Mohammed felt good, that the Soviet Union would now be diminished in numbers by an entire tribe. Even if nobody had known about this people, their potential usefulness to the government had now disappeared and these workers who once upon a time had dug whole rivers for the Beys and Khans would no longer be digging anything, even their own graves.

Nur-Mohammed not only felt satisfaction now, he even skipped a little in a kind of dance while he watched these people fall into their last sandy sleep. He held his own value dearer now: there would be more good things for him in the desert as on all the earth, because there were fewer people living. It’s uncertain if he would have enjoyed selling this people into slavery more than now that he had lost it, now that nature had become more spacious, now that the mouths of all these greedy poor people had been closed forever. Mohammed made up his mind to go to Afghanistan for good, and to take Aidim with him so that he could sell her there, and recoup at least some of his losses from working in the Soviet Union.

The wind suddenly let up, and it grew lighter all around. Nur-Mohammed clutched the girl so tightly to himself that Aidim opened her eyes. Then he took her into a comfortable cave in the sand to fondle her, lonely for the pleasure to be had from another’s body. Neither hunger nor long-felt grief could destroy in him the need for human love; it lived on imperishably in him, hungry and independent, breaking through all cruel misfortunes and not losing its strength in his weakness. He could have embraced a woman and made a child, in sickness, insane, a minute before his final death.

It was getting dark in the desert, night fell, and it went by in darkness. Some people who had fallen on the sand from the wind the night before stood up the next morning and began to look around them in the clean light and in the quiet of another day.

Not far away, from behind a desolate sand hill, a shot was heard. Sufyan, half asleep, sat up and began to listen. Aidim ran up to him, away from Mohammed who was sleeping some distance away and did not wake up.

The people were all alive although their lives were no longer supported by their own will and were almost beyond their strength. They looked straight in front of them although they had no clear idea of what they should now do with themselves; eyes that had been dark started to grow bright with indifférence, showing no attention to anything nor even that they still had vision, as if they were blinded or worn out. Aidim alone wanted to be alive, she had not yet used up her childhood nor her mother’s reserve of energy, she looked at the sand with eyes that were still full of life.

Two more shots were fired behind the dune. Aidim walked out to see what it was but at first she could not find where the shots had come from. None of the other people moved; they feared no enemy and they expected no friend or helper.

Aidim walked over the fourth row of dunes and saw below her a man lying either asleep or dead next to a dark bird. The girl slid down the bank of sand, and recognized Chagatayev. She felt his face with her hands; it was warm, and breath was coming out of his mouth.

“Sleep!” Aidim said in a whisper, and she put her fingers on Chagatayev’s eyelids which had started to open in his sleep.