Authors: Hamid Ismailov
The first phrases Yerzhan learnt in Russian were Petko’s musical exclamations: ‘Upper bow! Move the bow down! Third finger! Second string! Louder! Smooth movement!’
He dreamt these phrases, together with the sounds of the violin in different-coloured, rounded notes. His dreams had never been so jolly before. The notes walked about like little men. This one was fat and pompous, with a huge pot belly, while these minced along on skinny legs. And they fused together into bright pictures, like what happened when Yerzhan deliberately pressed on his eyes and multicoloured cabbages started blossoming under his fists. During the day he wanted to share these pictures that bloomed in his vision each night with his little
girlfriend
, Aisulu. So he stole up on her from behind and pressed her eyeballs in really firmly, intoning in a language she didn’t understand, ‘Whatnoteisthat? Sharpersound! Fingersfingersfingers! Where’sthebow? Nearerthebridge!’
On the long journey to the lessons, Yerzhan often asked his uncle, who had served in the Soviet Army, about this word or that in Russian, learning it off by heart, just in case. ‘You’re farting out of your arse!’ Kepek taught the boy when he warmed up by practising his scales. And when he spotted in Yerzhan’s pocket the metal box of rosin that Petko had put down just before they left, he asked, ‘Why did you fucking nick that?’ And so Yerzhan explained to Petko, ‘I fucking nicked this,’ as he returned the rosin and exclaimed, ‘You’re just farting out of your arse,’ as he was asked to start the lesson with scales. Petko gazed at the boy admiringly, choking on his laughter as he repeated, ‘You really take the biscuit, kid!’
Needless to say, the phrase was etched into Yerzhan’s mind as the highest and most cheerful praise possible, and he patted his Aisulu on the back in exactly the same way: ‘You really take the biscuit, kid!’
‘Petko’s no fool,’ Shaken told the family after supper. He had taken Yerzhan to his violin lesson that day. After all, it was him who had bought the boy the violin, not Kepek. But instead of a lesson, Yerzhan was told to go away while Shaken chatted with Petko for over three hours. ‘Petko graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire’ – yet another incomprehensible word for Yerzhan’s Russian musical vocabulary – Shaken continued to explain, ‘where he studied with Oistrakh himself.’ ‘
Oi, strakh!
’ – ‘Oh, terror!’ in Russian – was what the city bride Baichichek cried out whenever she was frightened, and now too she seized the chance to spit and exclaim, ‘
Oi, strakh!
’ ‘He’s no
hotchpotch
!’ Shaken repeated, although he hadn’t discovered how Petko had come to work at a Mobile Construction Unit just seven kilometres away from Kara-Shagan.
On their next trip to the lesson, Kepek merely gestured dismissively: ‘Shaken knows fuck all!’ Then he added, ‘I, on the other hand, do know!’ But then he fell silent and didn’t reveal how Petko, whose name he couldn’t even say properly, calling him ‘Pedo, Pedo’ all the time, had ended up here, in the middle of the Kazakh steppe.
*
One thing the Mobile Construction Unit had, however, and that was a shower. Even Grandad Daulet, who was secretly still peeved with the boy for betraying the
dombra
for the violin, decided to make the journey to a music lesson when he heard about the shower. Sweat flowed down his wrinkled neck and he gave off a sour smell as he rode towards the unit in the sweltering sun. Yerzhan sat behind him on the horse. Petko greeted them. He had combed his hair. He had tidied the trailer. The old man disappeared with his grandson behind the tarpaulin curtain. There Grandad massaged his own head with so much water and soap that it splashed everywhere and into Yerzhan’s eyes too. But despite that, suddenly the boy saw the brown, wrinkled sac of Grandad’s testicles peep out of the drawers which the old man had not taken off, even in the shower. ‘Grandad, why have you got two balls?’ Embarrassed, Daulet swiftly rearranged his clothing. ‘Well, you see…’ For a moment he hesitated, thinking about the question, then he said, ‘I’ve got two children, that’s why I’ve got two balls.’
‘So has Shaken only got one, then?’ the boy exclaimed in surprise. ‘And does that mean Kepek hasn’t got any?’
To these questions, however, Grandad couldn’t think of a reply, so he merely shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
Grandad Daulet took a shine to Petko and in the early autumn he asked Kepek to invite the Bulgarian to join them on a fox hunt. Before Yerzhan was born, Daulet had
raised a golden eagle for hunting. It died after Yerzhan’s arrival and the hunting had stopped. Perhaps the old man felt that a new little eagle had hatched in his family and that the annual hunt in the reeds where Yerzhan was conceived had come to its natural end. Grandad Daulet now called his grandson a little eagle.
And so, in honour of the little eagle and his teacher, Grandad had decided to take the entire male population of Kara-Shagan out on a fox hunt. Uncle Kepek told Yerzhan how easily they used to hunt with the dog and the eagle. Kapty drove the fox out of its den and the eagle grabbed it from the air. But this time Grandad wanted to take the fox alive – the old-fashioned way. The arrangement was this: as soon as Kapty sniffed out a she-fox and drove it from its den, and the animal ran off in any direction, cunningly trying to confuse its tracks to distract the dog from its still-weak cubs, Grandad Daulet, Petko and Yerzhan would start driving the fox across the steppe with the low sun at their backs.
Uncle Shaken would be waiting for them just within shouting distance, and as soon as he spotted the animal he would dart out from the side and turn the direction of pursuit abruptly away from the sun: that is, he would force a
kaltarys
– a ninety-degree turn – on the fox. Then Uncle Kepek, also just within shouting distance, would take over. As soon as he spotted the fox, he would dart out on horseback from the side and turn the direction of Kapty’s pursuit of the fox through another ninety degrees, so that the sun would be shining straight into the
cunning she-fox’s eyes. Meanwhile Grandad, Petko and the eagle-eyed Yerzhan, hallooing and whooping, would advance on their quarry, not from the side this time, but straight on, face to face, and… Yerzhan gave Grandad’s double-barrelled shotgun a respectful glance.
Everything happened just as Grandad had planned. Kapty growled as he scrabbled the fox out of its den. The animal darted out, dashing off towards the sun, but Grandad started whooping so loudly that it stopped for a moment, then gathered its wits and dashed back past Kapty in the opposite direction – and the chase was on. Kapty galloped at full speed, with no breath left even to bark, but Grandad hallooed loud enough for the whole steppe to hear. Fortunately for Yerzhan, he was sitting behind Grandad’s broad back, tied on with his belt, or he would certainly have gone deaf. Petko whooped too, sitting on a borrowed horse. This went on for about five minutes, until Grandad reined in his horse, and Yerzhan not only heard but actually saw Uncle Shaken give the fox that
kaltarys
, and it hurtled past to the side of them. Kapty stopped for a moment, but Grandad shouted to him, ‘Crush it!’ and Kapty finally barked at the top of his lungs and set off in the new direction.
While Shaken’s voice and image shrank away, they
galloped
parallel with him, to take up their starting position for the
uluu kaltarys
– ‘the main turn’. With his young eagle eyes, Yerzhan saw Shaken and Kepek intersect as two points off to the side. Then the picture vanished: Grandad Daulet had turned the horse. The noise of the
chase approached a crescendo. ‘Grandpa, let me see!’ Yerzhan cried with all his might. Without taking off his belt, the old man swung the boy around and sat him on the saddle’s front arch. He gently pulled the reins and the horse bent its head to one side, giving Yerzhan a full view of the steppe. And not without pride, the boy thought: This is probably how he treated his golden eagle.
Yerzhan could see no fox, but he saw Uncle Kepek, whooping as he rode along, and slightly ahead of him, he noticed the dog, Kapty, a faded fur ball. Closer and closer and closer… And suddenly Yerzhan became aware of a dusty point rushing towards them. ‘Grandpa, look!’ His heart pounded, caught between fervour and pity. Now Grandad would reach between stirrup leather and saddle girth, take out the gun and… But the old man froze, and then in the next moment whipped his horse, letting out a deafening ululation that merged with the whooping of Petko and Kepek. Grandad Daulet and Yerzhan now flew on their horse across the plain to meet the fox head on. It is rushing straight for us, fearing for its life, Yerzhan thought. But no. The fox, harried and confused, dropped in a dead faint on the ground and rolled head over heels, impelled by its own momentum. And before Kapty could gnaw through the animal’s throat, Grandad Daulet cast his net and caught it. He did it so skilfully and accurately that the fox, still rolling, turned over twice and curled up in the net.
They had caught the fox alive – as men used to do in the olden days. Yerzhan saw the animal’s defeated eyes
full of anguish and despair. How had people managed to close off the free steppe on every side? And if it hadn’t been for Petko, who refused Daulet’s offer of a winter coat and begged him not to skin the animal, Kapty would have dug out her cubs too. The true goal isn’t the goal, but the path to that goal, Petko said wisely. The old man had no choice but to agree with his guest. He sent the dog home with Uncle Kepek, waved his hand in frustration and released the bewildered fox back into the steppe.
Shaken had disappeared from sight as soon as the hunt was finished. Now he came riding towards them from the direction of the fox hole. Something was tucked under his sheepskin coat. When he reached the men he pulled out a fox cub. He said he’d caught it in the desert. It had probably run out in terror after its mother. Aisulu and Yerzhan can have a kitten! Yerzhan saw Petko’s
reproachful
glance, but then he remembered how much Aisulu would like to have a fox cub, and he pretended not to have noticed Petko’s glance.
Later that day, however, despite Petko’s love of living creatures, Grandad Daulet slaughtered a ram in honour of their guest. He skinned it and cooked the head in a dish of noodles. Petko struggled to eat the meal with his hands. Under old Daulet’s gaze, the violinist’s delicate fingers were as limp as noodles themselves. After the hearty supper, Daulet picked up his
dombra
and sang one of his ancient songs for their guest, explaining to
Petko that here, as in the fox hunt, the listener is forced to follow the singer’s twists and turns until he falls, like the fox, into the performer’s snares.
There, in a world of shadows,
Sadness has fled
While in its stead,
There’s all that your heart may desire.
‘Let’s turn ninety degrees,’ the old man interjected, then continued:
Oh, the slippery world,
Just like a torrent,
Whirled us about like straw.
Sweeping along,
Spinning around
Our hollow bodies.
‘And another ninety-degree turn,’ exclaimed the old man, and waved his hand at Petko.
The world keeps on turning,
Quietly murmuring,
And pours into an eternal sea.
Someone ahead,
Someone behind,
All are but straws in a bundle.
‘And now the final turn,’ the old man roared, and finished his song in a hushed voice:
That peace is quiet,
Calming and silent,
The torrent fades into a backwater…
As they sang, the fox cub, which had brought such joy to Aisulu, quietly slipped out of the house and was mauled to death by Kapty. They shed many tears as Uncle Kepek buried the furry little body off in the distance. From that evening on, each night, Yerzhan would hear a howl when the mother fox came to their door and begged for her cub. Kapty never barked when she came. Instead he would whine, as he did before an atomic blast.
That autumn an entire new window into the world opened up for the two-family population of Kara-Shagan. The city bride Baichichek insisted that Shaken went into town to buy a new radio with a gramophone attached. This was a genuine radiogram – nothing at all like Grandad’s hoarse, husky old Strela. From now on the days were structured. In the mornings Shaken exercised, encouraged by the trainer Gordeev and the pianist Potapov for everyone to hear. Then it was Grandad Daulet’s turn as he and the freshly exercised Shaken listened to the latest news that came after the Soviet anthem and Shaken’s unvarying credo: ‘We will not merely catch up with America, but overtake it!’ And
when Grandad Daulet had to tend his tracks, the women listened to the radio dramas on the second Kazakhstan channel. And when the women went to milk the cows and collect brushwood in the steppe, Kepek nestled up against the radiogram. He stuck various wires into it and tuned in to demoniacal music that set him shaking and twitching even without any drink.
Kind-hearted Petko gave Yerzhan two records:
Lendik Kogam
– Leonid Kogan – and
Dinrit
– Dean Reed.
Lendik Kogam
played the violin so beautifully, as if Petko had decided not to get distracted by any more pupils and simply play on his own. And
Dinrit
sang songs that sounded just like the ones Kepek fished for with his wires, only they possessed the same purity and exceptional joy as
Lendik Kogam.
Yerzhan and Aisulu played these two records over and over again, until the grown-ups showed up and put the records back on the shelves and the children to bed.
For anyone who has never lived in the steppe, it is hard to understand how it is possible to exist surrounded by this wilderness on all sides. But those who have lived here since time out of mind know how rich and variable the steppe is. How multicoloured the sky above. How fluid the air all around. How varied the plants. How innumerable the animals in it and above it. A dust storm can spring up out of nowhere. A yellow whirlwind can suddenly start twirling round the air in the distance in the same way that women spin camel wool into twine. The entire,
imponderable weight of that immense, heavy sky can suddenly whistle across the becalmed, submissive land…