The White Ship (10 page)

Alas, there was no way of changing his wretched lot in the mountains. The truck was coming in the evening, to haul off the logs.

He would be lucky if everything turned out well. The road ran right across the Soviet farm, right past the office. There was no other road. And the Soviet farm had frequent visitors—the militia, inspecting commissions, and heaven knows who else from the district center. If they caught sight of the timber, they'd start up right away: "Where from? Where to?"

Orozkul's back turned cold at the thought. And anger boiled within him against everything and everybody: the screeching jackdaws overhead, the miserable old Momun, that lazy good-for-nothing Seidakhmat, who guessed what was coming and left three days ago to sell potatoes in the city. He knew there would be logs to be dragged down the mountains, and so he slipped away. . . . And now he wouldn't be back until he finished all his business at the market. If he hadn't run off, Orozkul would have sent him to bring the logs down with the old man; he wouldn't have had to go through all this misery himself.

But Seidakhmat was far away, and the jackdaws were also beyond reach. He ached to give his wife a thrashing, but it would be a long time before he got home. There was no one left but old Momun. Growing more furious at every step, gasping in the thin mountain air, Orozkul walked head on through the bushes, sparing neither the horse, nor the old man behind him. Let him drop dead, that horse. Let him drop dead, that old man. Let him drop dead himself of heart failure. To hell with the whole world, where everything was wrong, where Orozkul was not appreciated according to his merits and position.

No longer able to control himself, Orozkul led the horse across the underbrush directly to a steep descent. Let Obliging Momun dance a little around the log. And let him just try and fail to hold it. "I'll thrash the old fool," Orozkul growled to himself. Ordinarily, he never would have ventured on such a dangerous slope with a log in tow. This time some devil must have tempted him. And before Momun had time to stop him, just as he was shouting, "Where are you going? Stop!," the log whipped sideways on the chain and, crashing through the underbrush, rolled downhill. The log was fresh and heavy. Momun tried desperately to block it with his pole, to hold it back. But the thrust of the log was so great that it knocked the pole out of his hands.

It all happened in a second. The horse fell and was dragged down on its side after the log. As it fell, it threw Orozkul. He rolled down, frantically trying to catch at the bushes. And at that moment some horned animals dashed in alarm through the underbrush. With high, strong leaps they bounded away and disappeared in the birch thicket.

"Deer! Deer!" Grandfather Momun cried out, beside himself with fright and joy. And instantly fell silent, as though he did not believe his eyes.

And suddenly all was still in the mountains. The jackdaws vanished. The log got stuck on its way down, crushing some strong young birches. The horse, tangled in his harness, rose to his feet by himself.

Orozkul, bruised and torn, crawled aside. Momun rushed to his aid:

"Oh, holy Mother, Horned Mother Deer! It was she who saved us! Did you see? They were the children of the Horned Mother Deer. Our Mother has returned. You saw it!"

Still disbelieving that they had escaped disaster, Orozkul stood up, sullen and shamed, and shook himself:

"Quit babbling, old man. That'll do. Get the horse un-tangled from the harness."

Momun obediently hurried to free the horse.

"Oh, miraculous Mother, Horned Deer!" he went on muttering happily. "The deer have come back to our forest. The Horned Mother has not forgotten us! She has forgiven our sin . . ."

"Still mumbling?" Orozkul snappped at him. He had already recovered from the fright, and his anger returned. "Again your fairy tales? Touched in the head himself, and thinks that others will believe his stupid notions!"

"I saw them with my own eyes. Deer." The old man would not yield. "Haven't you seen them, my son? You saw them yourself."

"Well, and what if I did—two or three of them . . ." "Right, three. I thought so too."

"Well, what of it? What's so damned great about it? A man could have broken his neck, and this one makes a fuss over some deer. They must have come across the pass. There are still deer, they say, on that side of the mountains, in Kazakhstan. There's a preserve there too. They came, so they came. It's none of our business. What has Kazakhstan to do with us?"

"Perhaps they'll settle here," Momun said dreamily. "If they would only stay . . ."

"That's enough," Orozkul broke in. "Let's get going!"

They still had to go a long way down the mountain with the log, then get the horse to drag it across the river. That was another difficult task. And then, if they succeeded in bringing it across, there was the job of pulling it uphill, to where the truck was to be loaded.

Orozkul felt altogether wretched. The whole world seemed unjust to him. The mountains—they felt nothing, wanted nothing, complained of nothing, just stood and stood there. The woods were drifting into autumn, then winter, and found nothing wrong with that. Even the jackdaws flew about freely, screaming to their hearts' content. The deer, if they were really deer, had come from beyond the pass and would wander in the forest anywhere they pleased. In the cities, carefree people walked on paved streets, rode in taxis, sat in restaurants, enjoyed themselves. And only he was condemned to exile in these mountains, to this misery. . . . Even Obliging Momun, his worthless father-in-law, was happier than he: he believed in fairy tales. The old fool. Fools were always pleased with life.

Orozkul hated his life. This kind of life was not for him. It was for people like Momun. What did Momun need? Bending his back in labor day in, day out, without rest. And not once in his lifetime had he been master over a single man; forever ordered about by someone else. Even his old woman had him under her thumb, with never a word of protest from him. Such a miserable creature, yet a fairy tale could make him happy. Sees a few deer in the woods, and he's moved to tears, as though he's met his own brothers after searching for them for a hundred years.

Oh, what's the use . . .

They came at last to the final ledge, beyond which lay a sheer descent to the river. They halted to rest.

Something was smoking in the forest post across the river, near Orozkul's house. They could tell it was the samovar. Orozkul's wife was waiting for him, but this brought him no relief. He gasped for breath, his mouth wide open. There wasn't enough air. His chest ached, and in his head each heartbeat throbbed like an echo. The sweat dripping from his forehead made his eyes smart. And before him was still the long, steep descent. And the empty-bellied wife waiting at home. Ugh, prepared the samovar . . . Trying to please him. He had a sudden, violent desire to take a running start and kick that samovar to the devil, then throw himself upon his wife and beat and beat her till she started bleeding, till she dropped dead. He gloated, imagining her screams, her curses against fate. "Let her," he thought. "Let her scream. If I suffer, why shouldn't she?"

Momun broke in on his thoughts.

"Oh, how could I have forgotten, my son!" He hurried over to Orozkul. "I must go to the school, to pick up the child. Classes are over."

"And what about it?" Orozkul asked with deliberate calm.

"Don't be angry, my son. Let us leave the log here and go down. You'll have dinner at home, and I will ride down to the school. I'll bring the boy, then we'll come back and get the log."

"How long did it take you to think this up, old man?" Orozkul taunted him.

"The child will cry."

"So what?" Orozkul exploded. At last he had a pretext for loosing his full rage against the old man. All day he had looked for something to pick on, and now Momun himself provided it. "He'll cry, so we must leave our work? In the morning you nagged-1 have to take him to school.' All right, you did. And now 'I have to take him from school.' And what do you think I am? Are we playing games here, or what?"

"Don't, my son," begged Momun. "Not today. It doesn't matter about me, but the boy will wait, he'll cry—on such a day . . .

"What kind of day? What makes it so special?"

"The deer are back. Why, then, on such a day . . ."

Orozkul stared at him. For a moment he was speechless. He had already forgotten the deer who had flashed by—quick, leaping shadows—while he had rolled down over thorny bushes, his soul in his heels with terror. At any second he could have been flattened by the log.

"What do you take me for?" he snarled, breathing into the old man's face. "A pity you've no beard, or I would give you such a shaking you wouldn't think that others have less sense than you. What the devil do I care about your deer? Don't try your tricks with me. Get down to the log. And don't you dare to bother me about anything until we get it across the river. It's none of my business who goes to school, or who is crying. That's enough. Come on. . . ."

As always, Momun obeyed. He realized that he would not break away from Orozkul until the log was delivered, and he worked with silent desperation. He never uttered another word, although his heart was crying out. His grandson waited for him near the school. All the other children would be gone, and he alone, his orphaned grandson, would be looking down the road, waiting for his grandfather.

The old man saw in his mind the children bursting out of the schoolhouse all together and scattering to their homes, hungry after their classes. Already in the street they smelled the food prepared for them, and eagerly, excitedly, they ran past the open windows, each to his own home. Their mothers were waiting for them. Each with a smile that made their heads turn round. Life might be hard or easy for the mother, but she would always have a smile ready for her child. And even if she scolded, "Are your hands clean? Go wash your hands!" her eyes would smile in welcome all the same.

Since he had started school, the boy's hands were always smeared with ink. This actually pleased Momun: it meant the boy was doing his work. And now the child was standing on the road, his hands ink-stained, holding his beloved schoolbag. He was probably tired of waiting, and looked and listened anxiously for his grandpa to appear over the hilltop on his horse. Because Momun was always prompt. By the time the boy came out of school, his grandfather would already be dismounted, waiting for him nearby. Everybody would go home, and the boy would run to his grandfather. "There's grandpa," he would say to his schoolbag. "Let's run." And when he came up to the old man, he'd stop, embarrassed. If no one was around, he'd fling his arms around his grandfather and press his face to the old man's stomach, breathing in the familiar smell of his old clothes and dry summer hay. These past few days Momun had been bringing the hay in large bundles from across the river. In winter it would be impossible to reach the hay through the deep snow; the best thing was to bring it over in the fall. AFter this autumn chore, Momun would go about for a long time smelling of the slightly acrid hay dust. The boy liked the smell.

The old man would put the boy lip on the horse behind him, and they would ride home eithef at a slow trot, or at a walk. Sometimes they were silent, sonietimes they would ex¬change a word or two about something unimportant. They'd get across the pass between the mountains, and then, before they knew it, they would come down iiito their own San-Tash valley.

The boy's enormous eagerness for school annoyed grandma. The moment he awakened, he quickly dressed and rearranged the books and copybooks in his schoolbag. It an¬gered the old woman that he always 1ept the schoolbag near him at night.

"Glued to his stinking schoolbag! Why don't you marry it—save us the bride money . . ."

The boy ignored grandma's wads. Besides, he didn't rightly understand them. The main thing to him was to get to school on time. He'd run into die yard and hurry his grandpa. And he would not calm down until the schoolhouse was in sight.

One day last week they were late, anyway. Momun had gone across the river mounted on his horse at dawn. He thought he'd bring some hay over fiirst thing that morning. It would have been all right, but the bundle got untied and the hay scattered. He had to tie it up t again and reload it on the horse. Because he had hurried, the bundle got untied a second time right by the riverbank.

And his grandson was already waiting for him on the other side. He stood on top of a jagged rock, waving the schoolbag and shouting, calling him. The old man hurried, and the rope got tangled; he couldn't straighten it. The boy kept shouting, and Momun saw that he was crying. He left the hay and the rope, and hastened across the ford to his grandson. But fording the river is a slow job, the current is strong and swift. In the fall it's not so bad, but in the summer it may throw the horse, and then you're gone. When Momun had finally gotten across, the boy was sobbing. He did not look at his grandfather, but kept repeating, "I'm late, I'm late for school." The old man bent down, lifted the boy into the saddle, and galloped off. If the school had been nearer, the boy would have run there himself. But now he cried all the way, and the old man could not quiet him down. And that was how he brought him, sobbing, to school. The classes had already started, and he led the boy right to his teacher.

Momun apologized and apologized to her, promising that it would not happen again. But he was shaken most of all because his grandson had cried so bitterly, because he had suffered so deeply over his lateness. "May God grant that you always love school so much," the grandfather thought to himself. And yet, why had the boy cried so uncontrollably? It meant there was some pain, some unexpressed pain of his own in his soul.

And now, as he was climbing down beside the log, jumping from one side to another, pushing and guiding it with his pole, Momun kept thinking about the boy out there.

But Orozkul was in no hurry as he led the horse. In truth, one could not hurry there. The way was long and steep. It was necessary to move slantwise. Still, he might have listened to the old man's plea to leave the log and go back for it later. Ah, thought Momun, if he had strength enough, he'd lift the log onto his shoulder, step across the river, and throw it down on the spot where the truck was to be loaded. Here, take your log and do not bother me again. And then he'd hurry off for his grandson.