The White Ship (12 page)

They were already approaching the post along the path that ran behind the houses. A house from the back is just like a man from the back. None of the three houses gave any sign of what was going on inside. The yard was also empty and quiet. Momun's heart shrank with foreboding. What could have happened? Had Orozkul beaten his unhappy daughter? Had he drunk himself into a stupor? Why was it so quiet? Why was nobody out in the yard at this hour? "If everything's all right," thought Momun, "that blasted log will have to be dragged out of the river. To the devil with Orozkul, it's best to humor him—do what he wants, and forget it. You can't prove to an ass that he is an ass."

Momun rode over to the stable.

"Get down. We're home," he said to his grandson, trying to conceal his anxiety. But when the boy ran toward the house with his schoolbag, Momun stopped him: "Wait, we'll go together."

He put Alabash in the stable, took the boy by the hand, and walked toward the house.

"Now listen," the grandfather said to his grandson, "if they scold me, don't be frightened, don't pay attention to their words. It doesn't concern you. Your business is to go to school."

But nothing of the kind happened. When they came in, grandma merely gave Momun a long, disapproving look, compressed her lips, and resumed her sewing. Grandpa said nothing either. Frowning and tense, he stood a while in the middle of the room, then he took a large bowl of noodles from the stove, brought spoons and bread, and sat down with his grandson to a late supper.

They ate silently. Grandma did not even look in their direction. Anger was frozen on her flabby brown face. The boy realized that something terrible had happened. But the old people remained silent.

Such dense fear and disquiet settled over the boy that he could barely eat. There is nothing worse than silence at the dinner table, when people are absorbed in their own anger. "Maybe it's our fault," the boy said mentally to his schoolbag, which lay on the windowsill. The boy's heart rolled down to the floor, slipped across the room, climbed to the windowsill, nearer to the schoolbag, and whispered to it:

"You don't know anything about it? Why is grandpa so sad? What did he do? And why was he late today? Why did he come on Alabash, and without a saddle? This never happened before. Could he have been delayed because he saw the deer in the woods? And suppose there are no deer at all?

Suppose it isn't true? What then? Why did he tell me about it? The Horned Mother Deer will be very angry if he lied to us . . .

After supper, Grandpa Momun said quietly to the boy: "Go out into the yard, I have some business to attend to. You'll help me. I'll be out in a moment."

The boy obediently left. And as soon as he closed the door, grandma's voice rose behind him:

"Where to?"

"To get the log. It got stuck in the river," said Momun.

"Ah, thought better of it, eh?" grandma screamed. "Came to your senses? Go look at your daughter. Guldzhamal took her into her house. Who needs her now, your barren fool? Go, let her tell you who she is now. Her husband turned her out like a mangy dog."

"Well, he did, so he did," Momun said bitterly.

"Look at him! And who are you? Your daughters are no good, so you think you'll raise your grandson to be an important official! That brat! If it was somebody to risk your neck for, at least. And it is Alabash, no less, that you must ride. Just look at you! It's time you knew your place, time you remembered the kind of man you're bucking. . . . He'll twist your neck like a chicken's. Just wait! Since when did you begin to fly in people's faces? Great hero! And don't you even think of bringing your daughter here, I wouldn't let her on the doorstep . . ."

The boy walked across the yard with a bowed head. Grandma's screams continued in the house, then the door flew open, and Momun rushed out. The old man went to Seidakhmat's house, but Guldzhamal met him at the threshold.

"It's better if you don't go in now. Later," she said to Momun. He stopped in confusion. "She's crying, he beat her up," whispered Guldzhamal. "He says they will not live to¬gether anymore. She's cursing you. She says it's all your fault."

Momun was silent. What could he say? Now even his own daughter would not see him.

"And Orozkul is drinking in there. He's like a wild beast," Guldzhamal spoke in a whisper.

They stood in silence, thinking. Guldzhamal sighed sympathetically:

"If only Seidakhmat would come soon. He said he would return today. You'd bring the log over together, and be rid of that, at least."

"It's not the log so much. That's not the worst of it." Momun shook his head. He stood, thinking, then he noticed his grandson at his side. "Go and play awhile," he said to the boy.

The boy walked away. He went into the barn, took the binoculars hidden there, and dusted them. "We're in bad trouble," he told them sadly. "I think it's my fault, and the schoolbag's. If there was another school nearby, I'd run off with the schoolbag to study there—but so that nobody would know. The only one I would be sorry for is grandpa, he'd search for me. And you, binoculars, with whom would you be looking at the white ship? You think I couldn't turn into a fish? You'll see. I'll swim to the white ship . . ."

The boy hid behind the haystack and began to look around him through the binoculars. But he looked joylessly and briefly. At other times he could not get enough of it—the mountains, covered with autumn woods. White snow above, red flame below.

The boy put the binoculars back in their usual place. As he came out of the barn, he saw his grandfather leading the harnessed horse across the yard. He was going to the ford. The boy wanted to run to him, but he was stopped by Orozkul's shout. Orozkul jumped out of the house in his undershirt, his coat over his shoulders. His face was purple, like a cow's swollen udder.

"Hey, you!" he shouted threateningly to Momun. "Where are you taking the horse? Come on, now, put him back. We'll get the log without you. Don't you dare touch it. You're nobody here from now on. You're fired from the job. Get out of here—go anywhere you wish."

The old man smiled bitterly and led the horse back to the stable. He suddenly became very old and very small. He walked, shuffling his feet, without looking at anyone.

The boy gasped. His breath stopped with anger and grief for his grandfather, for his humiliation. To hide his tears, he ran away down the path by the river. The path blurred before him, disappeared, then reappeared under his feet. The boy ran, crying. Here were his favorite boulders, the "tank," the ((wolf," the "saddle," the "resting camel." He said nothing to them. They understood nothing, they just lay and lay there. He merely put his arms around the resting camel's hump and, pressing himself to the rusty granite, sobbed .aloud, bitterly and inconsolably. He cried for a long time, gradually quieting down.

At last he raised his head, wiped his eyes, looked up, and turned numb.

Right before him, on the opposite bank, three deer stood by the water. Real deer. Real, living deer. They had come down to drink. It seemed they had been drinking for some time and had enough now. Then one of them, the one with the largest, heavy horns, lowered his head to the water again and, sipping slowly, seemed to examine his horns in the inlet, as in a mirror. He was reddish brown, with a powerful chest. When he tossed his head up, drops fell into the water from his lighter-colored, hairy lip. Faintly stirring his ears, the great horned animal gave the boy a close, attentive look.

But the one who looked longest at the boy was the white, high-flanked doe with a crown of slender, branching horns on her head. Her horns were slightly smaller than the male's, but very beautiful. She was exactly like the Horned Mother Deer. Her eyes were enormous, clear, and liquid. And she was as stately as a fine mare that foals every year. The Horned Mother Deer looked at him intently, calmly, as if trying to remember where she had seen this roundheaded, wide-eared boy before. Her eyes gleamed moistly, glowing from the distance. A whiff of steamy breath rose from her nostrils. Next to her, with his back to the boy, a hornless fawn was munch¬ing at some willow branches. He did not care about anything. He was well fed, strong, and merry. Abandoning the branches, he made a sudden leap, brushed the doe with his shoulder, and, after a few more playful leaps, began to fondle his mother. He rubbed his hornless head against the Horned Mother Deer's side. And she still looked and looked at the boy.

Holding his breath, the boy came out from behind the rock and walked, as though dreaming. His arms stretched before him, he walked to the bank, to the very edge of the water. The deer were not the least bit frightened. They looked calmly at him from the opposite bank.

Between them ran the swift, transparent, greenish river, boiling up as it rolled across the underwater rocks. And if it were not for the river, it seemed to the boy that he could walk up and touch the deer. They stood on the even, clean, pebbled shore. And behind them, where the strip of pebbles ended, rose the flaming wall of autumn woods. Still higher, was the bare, clay ledge, and over it the golden and orange birches and aspens. And over all of this, the deep dense forest and white snow on the craggy summits.

The boy closed his eyes and opened them again. The picture before him did not change. The legendary deer still stood on the clean pebbled shore before the fiery-leaved thickets.

But now they turned and walked in single file across the bank and into the woods. First the large male, then the hornless fawn, and last the Horned Mother Deer. She glanced back over her shoulder at the boy again. The deer entered the thicket and walked among the shrubs. The scarlet branches waved over them, and red leaves dropped upon their smooth, strong backs.

They went up the path and rose to the clay ledge. Here they stopped again. And once more the boy thought that the deer looked at him. The male stretched his neck, threw back his horns, and sang out like a trumpet, "Ba-o, ba-o!" His voice rolled across the gap and the river in a long echo: "Aa-o, aa-o!"

And it was only then that the boy recalled himself. He dashed back home down the familiar path. He ran as fast as his breath allowed, raced across the yard, threw open the door with a bang, and shouted, gasping, from the threshold:

"Ata! The deer! The deer have come! They're here!"

Grandpa Momun glanced at him from the corner, where he sat, quiet and sorrowful, and did not answer, as if he had not understood his grandson's words.

"All right, stop shouting!" grandma snapped at him. "They're here, so they're here. That's all we have to think about!"

The boy went out quietly. There was no one in the yard. The autumn sun was already sinking behind Outlook Mountain, behind the row of bare, twilit crags. The dense, no longer warm sun glowed red upon the cooling, desolate mountains, and the chill glow scattered in wavering glints over the summits of the autumn ranges. The evening dusk was blanketing the woods.

A wind blew down from the snows. The boy shivered.

6

He shivered even when he got into bed. For a long time he could not fall asleep. Night was already black outside. His head ached. But the boy was silent. And no one knew he had fallen ill. He was forgotten.

And how could they help forgetting him?

His grandfather had lost his head altogether. He did not know what to do with himself. He would go outside, then come back; he would sit down, huddled, sighing deeply, then he'd get up and go out somewhere again. Grandma nagged at him angrily, but she too wandered back and forth over the house, stepped out into the yard, came back without apparent reason. From the yard came muffled, broken voices, hurried steps, curses. It seemed that Orozkul was cursing again. Somebody cried, sobbing.

The boy lay quietly, feeling more and more exhausted from all those voices and steps, from all that was happening in the house and yard.

He closed his eyes and, trying to console himself for his loneliness, for his sense of being utterly abandoned, turned his thoughts back to what had happened earlier, to what he longed to see. He stood on the bank of a wide river. The water flowed so fast that he could not keep his eyes on it long, it made him dizzy. And from the other bank the deer were looking at him. All three of them—the same he had seen that evening. And everything was repeated. The same drops fell from the wet lip of the horned buck when he raised his head from the water. And the Horned Mother Deer went on look¬ing attentively at the boy with her kind, understanding eyes. And her eyes were enormous, dark, and moist. The boy was astonished to hear the Horned Mother Deer sigh like a human being. Deeply and sorrowfully, like his grandfather. Then they walked away through the underbrush. The red branches swayed over them, and scarlet leaves dropped on their smooth, strong backs. They rose to the ledge over the sheer drop. They stopped. The large male stretched his neck and, throwing back his horns, sang out like a trumpet: "Ba-o, ba-o!" The boy smiled to himself, remembering how the voice of the big deer rolled over the river in a long echo. After that the deer vanished in the woods. But the boy did not want to part with them, and he began to invent the things he wanted to happen.

Again the wide, fast river raced before him. His head reeled from the rapid current. He leaped and flew across the river. Smoothly and softly he landed not far from the deer, who still stood on the pebbled bank. The Horned Mother Deer called him and asked:

"Whose boy are you?"

The boy was silent; he was ashamed to tell her whose boy he was.

"My grandpa and I, we love you very much, Horned Mother Deer. We've waited for you for a long time," he said.

"I know you. And I know your grandfather. He is a good man," said the Horned Mother Deer.

The boy felt happy, but he did not know how to thank her.

"Would you like to see me turn into a fish and swim down the river to Issyk-Kul and the white ship?" he asked her suddenly.

He knew how to do that. But the Horned Mother Deer did not answer. Then the boy began to undress and, shivering a little, as he did in summer, climbed down into the water, holding on to a willow branch. But the water, surprisingly, was not cold. It was hot, stifling. He swam underwater with open eyes, and myriads of golden grains of sand and tiny pebbles whirled about him in a buzzing swarm. He began to suffocate, but the hot current still dragged and dragged him on.