Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

Chagatayev smiled; he knew that grief and suffering are only ghosts and dreams, that even Aidim could destroy them with her child’s strength; an unreleased happiness, not yet tested, goes on beating in the heart and in the world, as in a cage, and every man feels its power, and its drawing near. Soon now he would change the destiny of his people. Chagatayev waved his hand to them. Aidim understood, and told them all to go away, so as not to bother Chagatayev in his hunting.

At the start of night, when all the people had dozed off, Aidim went out alone into the desert to look for the wild sheep. First she told Sufyan and Stari Vanka to dig with their hands in a small depression between two long sand dunes. There she had found clay under the sand, and this ought to hold water, and she had already drunk a little of it from the hole. She remembered, too, that when there is nothing to eat, water can also nourish.

The night moved across the sand. Chagatayev was sleeping on his right side, filled with dreams which drove out his thirst, his hunger, his weakness, and all his suffering. He was dancing in a garden, lighted by electric lights, with a grown-up Ksenya, on a summer night smelling of the earth and of childhood, just before the dawn already burning on the very tops of the poplar trees like a faraway voice which could not yet be heard. Ksenya was tired in his careful arms, her eyes closed as if she were asleep. With the dawn a wind came through the trees out of the east to rustle the dresses of the dancing women. The music played, and the early light and the wind moved across the faces of the quiet, happy people. Then the music stopped, it grew quite light around them, and Chagatayev was carrying Ksenya in his arms. Suddenly he saw darkness where there had been light, his head ached, and, falling, he turned onto his back as he fell, so as not to hurt Ksenya whom he was holding in front of him like a little child: let her fall on top of him and not be injured. He grabbed at her, but she was no longer there. He cried out and jumped up from the ground into the darkness, and two sharp blows, on his head and on his chest, knocked him back again.

The big birds, falling onto him and then rising into the air, struck him with their beaks and tore his clothing and his body with their claws. Chagatayev tried to get on his feet, but he couldn’t and he was losing strength from the pain and from new blows by the heavy birds falling onto him. He turned over and dug his hands hardened by despair into the sand surrounded by the desert night and soaked with his last blood. He wanted to scream, so as to pull up some desperate strength from what was left of his ebbing life deep inside him, but the stinging blows of the eagles’ beaks and their claws ripping his tendons choked his cry before he could fill his lungs. The beating of their wings made a wind, and he couldn’t breathe in this storm, and he was choking from the down and the feathers of the birds. Chagatayev realized that the first two blows of their beaks had hit him in the head near the back of his neck, where blood was now flowing down his neck, and one of the nipples on his chest, it seemed, had also been ripped and this wound hurt him with a tickling, aching pain.

Finally Chagatayev managed to get to his feet for a moment. He stretched out his arms, ready to grab the first bird which fell on him and to strangle it in his hands. The eagles were in the air, picking up momentum to dive on him. His foot stepped on his revolver, and he leaned down to pick it up, but couldn’t lift it. The birds dove onto his back, but by now his head had cleared and he was able to figure, from the number of new beak wounds he got, that there were three eagles. Chagatayev, when he had picked up his revolver, threw himself backwards trying to shake off or to knock down the bird fastened to his back, but he threw his weight badly, and fell down awkwardly on his side, and the eagles flew off to one side. Chagatayev tried to raise himself for a better aim and all the exhausted bones in his body scraped against each other, just like the bones of the people in his tribe. He heard it, and he felt sorry for his body and its bones—once upon a time his mother had put them together out of the poverty of her own flesh, not from love or passion, not from delight or enjoyment, but from the most everyday kind of necessity. He felt himself to be some alien property, like the last possession of poor people which they want to squander to no good purpose, and this feeling drove him to a terrible fury. Chagatayev sat down firmly on the sand. The eagles, without even rising to any great height, rushed down on him again at great speed, their wings held tightly to their bodies. He let them come close, and then he pulled the trigger. Chagatayev could see the eagles clearly this time, there were three of them, and now he was firing accurately, coldbloodedly, saving himself as if he were another person, a close friend who needed help. He fired five bullets almost point-blank at the birds rushing down at him. With a whistling of air the birds flew low over him, unable to check their momentum because they were either dead or fatally wounded. They fell some meters beyond Chagatayev on the dark night sand.

Chagatayev was shuddering with anxiety and exhaustion. He dug a little trench in the sand and lay down in it, squeezing his body in to get warm and to go to sleep, without worrying about how much blood would flow out of his wounds while he slept, not even thinking about them or whether he would live.

Aidim walked a long way that night, and then she grew tired, lay down, and fell asleep, without having heard Chagatayev’s shots. But remembering that she must not sleep long, she soon woke up and anxiously walked on farther. A poor, late-rising moon came up out of the earth a great distance away, and threw its low light across the sand. Aidim looked around her with searching eyes. She knew it was impossible that nothing should exist on the earth around her. If one walks across the desert for a whole day, one will inevitably meet or find something; either water, or sheep, or one will see a lot of birds, somebody’s lost donkey will turn up or various animals will run by. Older people had told her that there are just as many good things in the desert as in any country, no matter where, but there are few people, and this is why it seems as if nothing else exists. And Aidim didn’t even know that there was any land richer or better than the desert sand or the reed thickets in the flood waters of the Amu-Darya River.

Aidim stood on the highest sand dune; the twinkling, glimmering moonlight drew her in one direction—everywhere else the light moved easily but in this one place something was blocking it. She walked to where the light was darker and soon she could make out a little baby lamb. The lamb was scratching with its legs on the very top of a small sand hill and throwing up the sand in such a way that from a distance, seen through the darkness and across the spectral hilly desert, it looked like something important and mysterious going on.

The lamb was probably digging up blades of grass which had been buried in the spring, and eating them. Aidim quietly climbed up the dune and grabbed the lamb. It did not struggle, for it knew nothing about men. Aidim threw it down and wanted to bite through its weak little throat, to drink its blood and then to eat it. But then she noticed, right under the hill, a lot of sheep breathing heavily like people and digging with their front feet into the sand, trying to get at wetness hidden somewhere beneath them. Aidim let the lamb go and ran down from the dune to the flock of sheep. Before she got to them, a ram jumped up and stood stock-still in front of her, its head lowered for a fight. Aidim sat there for a while, facing the ram, and she thought in her small mind about what she should do now. She counted the flock; there were twenty-four of them including the lamb and two goats which were also living there. She crawled quietly up to the nearest sheep; the ram moved with her expectantly. With her hand Aidim felt the sand in the hole the sheep had been digging—it was dry, there was no wetness to be felt at all. A spume of tiredness was on the lips of the nearest sheep, sometimes they snapped at the sand with their mouths and then dropped it together with the last of their saliva. The sand was not watering them, but sopping up the last liquid in them. Aidim walked up to the ram; he was not very thin, but he was breathing heavily from thirst. Aidim took him by the horns, and pulled him along behind her. The ram went at first, then stopped to think about it, but Aidim tugged at him and the ram followed her. Some of the sheep lifted their heads and stopped working to follow the girl and the ram. The other sheep, and the goats, too, quickly caught up with them.