Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

“I know that people, that’s where I was born,” Chagatayev said.

“That’s why you’re being sent there,” the secretary said. “What’s the tribe called, do you remember?”

“It has no real name,” Chagatayev answered. “But it gave itself a nickname.”

“What’s that?”

“Dzhan. That means a soul, or dear life. These people don’t have anything except their souls, and the dear life their mothers gave them when they were born.”

The secretary frowned, and looked sad.

“That means, all they’ve got is the hearts inside their bodies, and they have that only while the hearts go on beating…”

“Only their hearts,” Chagatayev agreed, “nothing but life; except for their bodies, nothing belongs to them at all. But even their life isn’t really theirs, it only seems that way.”

“Did your mother ever tell you just who the Dzhan were?”

“She told me. Runaways and orphans from all over, and old exhausted slaves who had been driven out. Then there were women who had betrayed their husbands and come there out of fear, girls were always coming who had been in love with men who died suddenly and they didn’t want anyone else. And then people also lived there who didn’t recognize God, people who made jokes about the world, criminals… but I don’t remember them all. I was very little.”

“Go on back to them now. Find those lost people—the Sari-Kamish valley is empty now and they can go back.”

“I’ll go,” Chagatayev agreed. “But what am I to make there? Socialism?”

“What else?” the secretary declared. “Your people have already been in hell, let them live in paradise awhile, and we’ll help them with all our strength…. You’ll be our agent. The district officials sent somebody there, but he’s hardly done anything; it seems, he wasn’t one of us…”

Then the secretary gave Chagatayev detailed and complete instructions, with a letter of credentials, and Chagatayev took his leave. He planned to float down the Amu-Darya River to his homeland, taking a light canoe somewhere near Chardzhoui.

At the post office in Tashkent he found a letter from Vera. She wrote that her child was getting close to being born; he was already thinking something inside her body, because he stirred around often and was dissatisfied.

“But I pet him, I stroke my stomach,” Vera wrote, “and I put my face as close to him as I can and I say: ‘What do you want? You’re warm and quiet there, I’m trying not to move much so you won’t be disturbed—why do you want to get outside of me?’ I’ve grown used to him, I live with him all the time as with a friend, the way I wanted to live with you, and I’m afraid of his birth—not because it will hurt, but because it will be the beginning of separation from him! for good, and his little legs which he’s kicking with now will hurry to go away from his mother, farther and farther— as long as he lives—until my son will be quite hidden from me, from my cried-out eyes…. Ksenya remembers you, but she misses you with you so far away, and not coming back soon, and not even hearing from you. Are you sure you haven’t already died somewhere out there?”

Chagatayev wrote Vera a postcard, sending kisses to her, and to Ksenya on her different-colored eyes, and telling her a little time must still go by before he could come back; he would come as soon as he had made his people, the Dzhan, happy.

Four canoes were being got ready to go down the river with supplies from Chardzhoui to Nukus. Chagatayev did not try to use his status as an agent sent by the party, since the rights this gave him were not well recognized, and he took a job as a sailor. He agreed to go as far as the Khiva oasis, where he would go ashore.

Long days of floating down the river followed. In the mornings and the evenings the river was transformed into a torrent of gold, thanks to the light of the sun piercing the water through its living, never-drying silt. This yellow dirt, traveling down the river, sometimes looked like bread, like flowers, like cotton, and even like a man’s body. Sometimes a strange, many-colored bird sat on a rise in the marshlands, twirling around from some emotion inside it, its feathers glistening in the living sunshine, and singing with its glittering thin voice as if a state of bliss had already dawned for all the creatures in the world. The bird reminded Chagatayev of Ksenya, a little woman with a bird’s eyes who was thinking something about him at that moment.

After fourteen days, Chagatayev went ashore at the Khiva oasis, accepting his pay and thanks from the senior sailor in charge. He stayed for several days in Khiva, and then walked up the road of his childhood toward his homeland in Sari-Kamish. He remembered the road by signs which had grown blurred: the sand dunes now seemed lower, the canal smaller, the path to the nearest well shorter. The sun shone as it had before, but it was not as high as it had been when Chagatayev was small. The little hills, the nomad tents, the donkeys and camels met along the road, the trees along the irrigation ditches, the flying insects, all these were as in the old days and unchanged, but indifferent to Chagatayev, as if they had gone blind without him. Every small creature, object or plant, it seemed, was more proud and more independent of its old attachments than a man.

Coming up to the dry bed of the Kunya-Darya River, Chagatayev saw a camel which was sitting like a human being, resting its front legs on a drift in the sand. The camel was thin, its humps had sagged down, and it looked shyly out of black eyes like a thoughtful, grieving man. When Chagatayev came up, the camel paid no attention; it was following the movement of some dead grass being blown by the wind—would it come closer or would it blow past? One blade of grass fluttered across the sand close to its mouth, and the camel chewed it with its lips, and swallowed it. In the distance a round tumbleweed was being dragged along by the wind, and the camel watched this big living plant with eyes made gentle by hope, but the tumbleweed moved by on one side; then the camel closed its eyes because it did not know how to cry.

Chagatayev examined the camel carefully; the animal had long since grown thin from hunger and disease, almost all the hair had fallen out leaving only a few clumps, and as a result the beast was quivering with chills. It had probably been unloaded and abandoned here by some passing caravan as a result of its weakness— or else the master had himself died, and the animal was waiting for him, meanwhile hoarding the strength of life left in it. Having lost the ability to move, the camel had raised itself up on its front legs in order to see the blades of grass being driven past by the wind, and to eat them. When there was no wind it closed its eyes, not wishing to waste its vision to no good end, and stayed in somnolence. It did not want to sink back and lie down—since it was no longer able to stand up—and thus remained sitting all the time, now observing, now drowsing, until death should strike it down or until some insignificant desert animal should finish it with one blow of a little paw.

Chagatayev sat next to this camel for a long time, watching and understanding. Then he collected some armfuls of tumbleweed from quite a large area, and fed them to the camel. He couldn’t water it, for he had only two canteens of water for himself, but he knew that there were fresh water ponds and small wells farther along the Kunya-Darya riverbed. But it would be hard for him to carry the camel across the sand.

Evening set in. Chagatayev fed the camel, bringing it grass from nearby patches, until the camel put its head down on the ground; it fell asleep with the heavy sleep of new life. Night fell, it began to grow cold. Chagatayev ate a flat cake from his knapsack, then drew close to the camel’s body in order to get warm, and began to drowse. He smiled; everything was strange to him in this world, as if it had been contrived for a quick and amusing game. But this special game was being dragged out endlessly, to all eternity, and no one wanted to laugh any longer, or could laugh. The empty land of the desert, the camel, even the wandering, sparse grass—all of this ought to be serious, big, and exultant. Does a feeling exist inside poor people of some other, happy, assignment, essential and indispensable, and is this why they feel so burdened, waiting for something? Chagatayev curled himself up around the stomach of the camel and fell asleep, lost in the wonder of reality.