mother, Kanyshat ? And what if he had loved her all his life? Hadn’t Yerzhan’s grandad told him how he once tied up Shaken when he came back drunk from his shift at night and tried to climb in through Kanyshat’s window? It had all been put down to drunkenness at the time, but this wasn’t the first time Yerzhan had caught him at his mother’s window, was it? And that was why he simply refused to leave and take his city wife, Baichichek, back to the city she longed for.
Stop! That time by the Dead Lake, in the Zone, at Shaken’s test site, where he was catching up with andovertaking America, when the kids from the school were running about in gas masks, Shaken was the one who appeared in that Armed Forces Protective Suit – like an alien from another world! And hadn’t his granny Ulbarsyn always spoken about an alien when she recalled Yerzhan’s miraculous conception on the very outskirts of the Zone, in that very same area where the river with the dried-out bed lay?
Yerzhan dashed into the next room to his mother. She was sitting on the windowsill, maybe with nothing to do for the very first time, with her face half-turned towards the window, following Shaken with her eyes as he moved away. ‘Do you love him?’ Yerzhan asked, gasping out all his anger and all his confusion. His mother didn’t turn towards her son, but merely ran her finger over the glass. ‘Does he love you?’ Yerzhan blurted out helplessly. His mother unwove the plait on her head, shook her hair out and then wove her plait again, looking at her faint reflection in the windowpane. ‘Is he your husband?’ Yerzhan asked in a shaky voice, continuing his interrogation. His mother folded her arms across her chest. A thick silence filled the room. The naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling quivered. Immediately the fear lurking in Yerzhan ’s ankles moved upwards along its usual path to his stomach, paused there as a cold, heavy weight and then slowly crept on up to his throat, and, after choking him for a moment, reached his lips, emerging as something that was neither a whisper, nor a wheeze, nor a convulsion : ‘Is he my father?’ A faint rumbling ran across thefloor, the room started trembling and his mother carried on sitting on the windowsill in the way she had been sitting , doing nothing for the first time in her life, merely gazing out of the window towards yet another train or yet another explosion.
Yerzhan ran out of the room. Run, run, run, out into the open steppe, across the Zone and past the horizon, past the edge of the world… Run from this fear, from this truth, from this life… So his Aisulu, growing extravagantly like the wild grass under the windows, his poor, unhappy Aisulu… and suddenly, like the she-fox after the
uluu kaltarys
– the final, great turn – Yerzhan’s consciousness imploded in exhaustion.
Aisulu was dying alone in a ward in the municipal hospital . Her father had brought her here and then had immediately been called to the testing ground. Her mother had stayed with her for the first few days, but had just left to see her aged parents, who lived in Semey. Aisulu lay there alone in the ward with the white ceiling. But she didn’t see the white ceiling. She saw the steppe and the road from Kara-Shagan to school and back. There she was, riding on the donkey with her Yerzhan, who had disappeared now, and the donkey suddenly picked up a cabbage stalk that someone had thrown out of a passenger train. The donkey had swallowed it whole and choked and lashed out. And first Aisulu and then Yerzhan tumbled off. Yerzhan shouted at Aisulu andAisulu grabbed the reins and Yerzhan put his arm up to the elbow into the donkey’s foaming mouth and pulled out the stalk. And then she took the scarf off her head, licked away the blood flowing along Yerzhan’s arm and bound the wound tightly.
A stalk, a huge stalk, had now got stuck inside Aisulu’s body and her organs were swelling, growing extravagantly,
Stop! That time by the Dead Lake, in the Zone, at Shaken’s test site, where he was catching up with andovertaking America, when the kids from the school were running about in gas masks, Shaken was the one who appeared in that Armed Forces Protective Suit – like an alien from another world! And hadn’t his granny Ulbarsyn always spoken about an alien when she recalled Yerzhan’s miraculous conception on the very outskirts of the Zone, in that very same area where the river with the dried-out bed lay?
Yerzhan dashed into the next room to his mother. She was sitting on the windowsill, maybe with nothing to do for the very first time, with her face half-turned towards the window, following Shaken with her eyes as he moved away. ‘Do you love him?’ Yerzhan asked, gasping out all his anger and all his confusion. His mother didn’t turn towards her son, but merely ran her finger over the glass. ‘Does he love you?’ Yerzhan blurted out helplessly. His mother unwove the plait on her head, shook her hair out and then wove her plait again, looking at her faint reflection in the windowpane. ‘Is he your husband?’ Yerzhan asked in a shaky voice, continuing his interrogation. His mother folded her arms across her chest. A thick silence filled the room. The naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling quivered. Immediately the fear lurking in Yerzhan ’s ankles moved upwards along its usual path to his stomach, paused there as a cold, heavy weight and then slowly crept on up to his throat, and, after choking him for a moment, reached his lips, emerging as something that was neither a whisper, nor a wheeze, nor a convulsion : ‘Is he my father?’ A faint rumbling ran across thefloor, the room started trembling and his mother carried on sitting on the windowsill in the way she had been sitting , doing nothing for the first time in her life, merely gazing out of the window towards yet another train or yet another explosion.
Yerzhan ran out of the room. Run, run, run, out into the open steppe, across the Zone and past the horizon, past the edge of the world… Run from this fear, from this truth, from this life… So his Aisulu, growing extravagantly like the wild grass under the windows, his poor, unhappy Aisulu… and suddenly, like the she-fox after the
uluu kaltarys
– the final, great turn – Yerzhan’s consciousness imploded in exhaustion.
Aisulu was dying alone in a ward in the municipal hospital . Her father had brought her here and then had immediately been called to the testing ground. Her mother had stayed with her for the first few days, but had just left to see her aged parents, who lived in Semey. Aisulu lay there alone in the ward with the white ceiling. But she didn’t see the white ceiling. She saw the steppe and the road from Kara-Shagan to school and back. There she was, riding on the donkey with her Yerzhan, who had disappeared now, and the donkey suddenly picked up a cabbage stalk that someone had thrown out of a passenger train. The donkey had swallowed it whole and choked and lashed out. And first Aisulu and then Yerzhan tumbled off. Yerzhan shouted at Aisulu andAisulu grabbed the reins and Yerzhan put his arm up to the elbow into the donkey’s foaming mouth and pulled out the stalk. And then she took the scarf off her head, licked away the blood flowing along Yerzhan’s arm and bound the wound tightly.
A stalk, a huge stalk, had now got stuck inside Aisulu’s body and her organs were swelling, growing extravagantly,
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