Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

Then Aidim untied the bird from the belt, took it by its leg and dragged it back across the sand to her people.

The whole tribe gathered around the bird and looked at it without greed, they had lost the habit of hoping for food. Then Aidim took a knife from the trousers Tagan had thrown away and started to pluck the bird and to cut it into little pieces. She gave each person who could still eat a little piece of the flesh of the bird, and she herself sucked the blood and the juice from each piece before giving it away. The people devoured their portions, sucked the bones and nibbled at the shredded feathers, but they were not satisfied and only wanted more.

Aidim went back to Chagatayev. The people, thinking there were more birds there, followed behind her. But the people walked too slowly now, some of them crawled, helping themselves with their hands. Chagatayev’s mother was one of these, helping Molla Cherkezov to crawl too. Others stayed where they were because they no longer had the strength to move their skeletons. Aidim, moving away a little, stopped and waited for the people struggling after her. It was evening before they all reached the sand hill behind which Chagatayev was lying. All the time the tribe was moving, Aidim could hear the rubbing and the scraping of the bones inside them; probably all the fat had dried up in their joints, she thought, and their bones were now torturing them.

Nur-Mohammed watched this movement of the tribe from a distance but it did not interest him. He wanted first to look for some water in the neighborhood, even if it were salty, for without it he would not get to the Khiva oasis. He decided to come back for Aidim later, after he had found water, so he could give her some to drink and then go away with her forever to Afghanistan.

Pain made Chagatayev cry in his sleep, and he woke up; he thought he had dreamed the pain and it would quickly go away. Two dark birds—one the female of before, the other a new male—were walking away from him. They had pecked his body three times with their sucking beaks and had torn his flesh to the bone on his chest, his knee and his shoulder. When they had walked away a little, the birds stopped, turned their necks, and looked at Chagatayev—each bird out of one eye. Nazar pulled out his revolver and started to fire at the birds quickly, before a lot of blood had flowed out of his wounds and he had lost the strength that had been gathered while he slept. The birds rose into the air. He managed to fire at them twice, and one bird dropped its wings and floated down, folding its legs under itself; then it laid its head down on the sand and stretched out its throat as if in unbearable fatigue. Blood started to flow out of the bird’s throat, soaking into its feathers and into the sand around it. Indifference showed in the bird’s eyes as gray films were drawn over them. The other bird flew up into the sky where it gave a short, hollow cry, sounding as if it came from an empty underground cave, and disappeared into the mist of the sun’s shining.

Aidim appeared from behind the sand hill. She walked up to the dead bird, and dragged it by its leg past Chagatayev.

“Aidim!” Nazar called to her.

The girl walked up to Chagatayev.

“Give me a drink,” he begged.

Aidim pulled the dead bird to him and, kneeling down, placed its throat next to Chagatayev’s lips while she began to squeeze the wet feathers so the blood would drop into Chagatayev’s mouth.

“You go on lying there now, as if you’re dead,” Aidim told him. “The birds will fly down on you, and the jackals will come, you kill them all and we’ll have something to eat…”

“Where are the other people?” Chagatayev asked.

“Here they come,” Aidim told him.

Chagatayev asked her to bring some water, if there was any, and wash his wounds. Aidim examined them, pulled away from them the wool of his clothing, and then licked them with her tongue, since she knew that saliva can heal a wound.

“Don’t worry, you won’t die, your wounds are little ones,” she said. “Now lie back quietly, or else the birds won’t come back.

Aidim dragged the dead bird behind the sand dune where her people had set up a new stopping place in the quiet of a deep depression in the sand. They ate the bird at once, and if people far away, who eat every day, could not have felt any slaking of their hunger from the tiny piece of shredded meat which Aidim gave to each person’, this insignificant morsel of food almost filled up a person with this great hunger, and in any case it gave the body hope, and comfort.

It grew dark again. Sufyan dug down to a wet level in the sand with his hands, and started to chew it against his thirst. Some of the people saw what he was doing, walked up to him, and shared his supper of sand and water. Nur-Mohammed was afraid of the cold, and came back to the tribe in the night so he could lie down somewhere in their midst, and warm himself.

Early in the morning, Mohammed woke up Aidim, took her in his arms, and walked off with her toward Afghanistan.

Chagatayev was lying where he had been before, like a dead man, keeping watch for the birds. He had counted his bullets, there were only seven left. He was sure the birds would come back again, for it was the male he had killed, and the female with the colored feathers had flown away and would come back again, and not alone, to finish off the man who had murdered its first, and perhaps its favorite, mate.

Aidim jumped out of Nur-Mohammed’s arms and ran to say good-bye to Chagatayev. He kissed her, stroked her face with his thin hand, and smiled. It was still not light. Nur-Mohammed was waiting for the girl a short distance away.

“Don’t go away, Aidim,” Nazar told the child. “We’ll soon have some luck ourselves.”

“I know,” Aidim answered. “But he ordered me…”

“Call him,” Chagatayev said.

Aidim beckoned to the tall Nur-Mohammed with her hand.

“You still dying?” Nur-Mohammed asked Chagatayev. “I thought the birds had eaten you up a long time ago.”

“Why do you take the girl with you?” Chagatayev asked him.

“It’s necessary, it must be,” Nur-Mohammed said.

“Let her stay with us,” Nazar said.

Aidim sat down on the sand next to Chagatayev. “I’m staying,” she said, “I’m still a little girl, and I’m tired to death of walking. I don’t have to go!”

Chagatayev leaned his elbows on the ground, and pulled the girl toward him. Dew had fallen, and Nazar quietly licked his tongue along Aidim’s hair on which there were little drops of moisture.

“Go away by yourself!” he told Mohammed.

“It’s high time for the dead to shut up!” Nur-Mohammed declared. “Lie back on the ground and sleep!” He kicked Chagatayev in the face with his foot in its canvas shoe.

Chagatayev fell backwards. He noticed that Mohammed’s official briefcase was still hanging around his neck; Nur-Mohammed thought of his whole life as just temporary assignments to distant places, and perhaps the only pleasure he took in his own existence was in being able to leave one place and move to another: let those who were left behind perish by themselves!

Without thinking, Chagatayev got quickly to his feet. Now he felt empty and light, his body had become free, and he swayed like a weightless man. Aidim put her arms around his stomach, to keep him from falling. But Nur-Mohammed grabbed Aidim around her body, and walked away with her. Chagatayev started after them, but fell down, and then stood up again, trying to summon all his strength. His weakness made the whole world swing in front of his eyes: first it was there, then it wasn’t. Nur-Mohammed went on walking away, without hurrying; he was not afraid of a man already half dead.