The White Ship (2 page)

The boy ran fast, jumping over low shrubs and going around boulders that were too big to jump across. He did not stop anywhere—not by the tall grasses, nor by the rocks, even though he knew that they were not plain grasses and rocks. They could take offense or even trip him up. "The store truck's coming, I'll be back," he cried as he ran past the "resting camel"—the reddish, humped granite boulder sunk chest-deep in the earth. At ordinary times the boy never passed by without patting the camel on the hump. He patted it with a light, familiar gesture, as grandpa patted his short- tailed gelding, as if to say, "Wait here, I must be off on business." Another of his boulders was a "saddle"—half-black, half-white, with a dip in the middle—and he could ride it like a horse. There was also a "wolf," brown-gray, hoary, with powerful shoulders and a heavy brow. The boy would stalk it on all fours and take aim at it. But his favorite was the "tank" —a huge, massive boulder right at the river's edge, the sand and gravel washed away around it. At any moment, the "tank" would plunge into the water, and the river would boil and churn and rise in fierce white-crested waves. That was what tanks did in the movies—down from the bank into the water, and on and on. The boy saw movies very seldom and therefore remembered everything. His grandfather sometimes took him to see a movie at the livestock-breeding farm in the neighboring village beyond the mountain. This was how a "tank" appeared by the water, ready to rush across the river. There were also other rocks, some "bad," some "kind," some even "sly," or "silly."

Among the plants there were also "favorites," "brave ones," "fearful," "evil ones," and a variety of others. The thornbush, for example, was the chief enemy. The boy fought it dozens of times every day, but there seemed no end to their war—the bush continued to grow and multiply. The wild convolvulus, though also a mere weed, was the cleverest and merriest plant. Its flowers welcomed the sun in the morning better than any others. Other grasses did not know anything: morning, evening—it didn't matter to them. But the convolvulus—the moment it felt the warm rays of the sun it opened its eyes and laughed. First one eye, then another, then all the furled flowers opened up. White, pale blue, lilac, every color. . . . And if you sat quietly, quietly near them, it seemed that they were silently whispering among themselves about something. Even the ants knew this. In the morning they ran along the sterns and flowers, squinting in the sunshine and listening to what the flowers were saying. Perhaps they told each other about their dreams?

In the daytime, at noon, the boy liked to climb into the thickets of long-stemmed, reedlike shiraldzhins. The shiraldzhins were tall; they had no flowers, but they smelled good; and they grew in patches, gathering in dense groups, allowing other plants to come near them. The shiraldzhins were true friends, they offered the best hiding place, especially when you were hurt and wanted to cry where nobody could see. They smelled like the edge of a pinewood. It was hot and quiet among them, yet they did not shut out the sky. You could stretch out on your back and stare into the sky. At first, you could see nothing through the tears. But then the clouds would come up above and do whatever you wanted them to do. The clouds knew you were not happy, they knew you wanted to run away somewhere, to fly away where nobody would ever find you. And then everybody would sigh and moan: The boy is lost, where shall we find him now? And to prevent it, to keep you from disappearing, to make you lie still and watch them, the clouds would turn into anything you wished. The same clouds could turn into many things. All you needed was to see what they were showing.

And it was quiet among the shiraldzhins, and they did not shut out the sky. That's what they were like, the shiraldzhins, which smelled of hot pine.

There were many other things he knew about the grasses. Toward the silvery feather grass down in the meadow, he had a tolerantly condescending attitude. It was silly, that leather grass! Scatterbrained. Its soft, silky tassels could not live without wind. All they did was wait to see which way it blew, and then they bowed in the same direction. Not one or two, but all together, the whole meadow, as at a command. And if it rained or stormed, the feather grass went frantic, it did not know what to do, where to hide. It tossed and flattened, pressed itself against the earth. If it had feet, it surely would run away, just anywhere at all. But actually it was only pretending. The moment the storm was over, the giddy tassels were back at their game with the wind, bowing wherever it blew.

Alone, without playmates, the boy lived with the simple things around him, and only the store truck could make him forget everything and rush to meet it. After all, a store truck wasn't like stones and grasses. There wasn't a thing you could not find in it!

By the time the boy reached home, the store truck was already entering the yard behind the houses. The houses in the post faced the river. The front yard passed directly into the slope that ran down to the bank, and on the other side, across the river, the forest rose steeply from the washed-out ravine up the mountainside. The only way to drive up to the houses was from the back. If the boy had not made it in time, nobody would have known that the store truck was already there.

The men had all been gone since morning. The women were busy with their household chores. And the boy ran to each open door, crying shrilly:

"It's here! The store truck is here!"

The women hurried to get the little money they had tucked away, and ran out, each one racing to get there first. Even grandmother praised him:

"He's got a sharp eye, that boy!"

The boy felt proud, as if he had brought the store truck there himself. He was happy because he had been first with the news, because he rushed out with the women into the backyard, because he bustled with them at the open doors of the truck. But they forgot him immediately. They were too excited. All those goods—their eyes didn't know where to look first. There were only three women: his grandma; Aunt Bekey his mother's sister and the wife of the warden Orozkul, the most important man at the forest station; and the young Guldzhamal, the wife of his helper Seidakhmat, with her little girl in her arms. Only three women. But they fluttered about so much, tugging at the goods and turning everything upside down, that the salesman was obliged to ask them to wait their turn and stop chattering all at once.

His words, however, had small effect on the women. At first they grabbed everything. Then they began to make their elections. Then they returned what they had chosen. They put things aside, tried them on, debated among themselves, and asked the same questions over and over again. One thing they did not like, another was too expensive, a third was the wrong color . . . The boy stood at the side. He was bored now. The expectation of something extraordinary, the first joy he felt when he had caught sight of the truck on the mountainside, was gone now. The store truck had suddenly turned into an ordinary truck filled with a lot of rubbish.

The salesman frowned. It didn't look as if those women were going to buy anything. Why had he bothered driving through the mountains to this godforsaken spot?

And he was right. The women started to give up, their enthusiasm waned, they suddenly seemed tired. They began to look for excuses. Grandma complained about the lack of money. And without money, how could you buy anything? Aunt Bekey did not dare to make a big purchase without her husband. Aunt Bekey was the unhappiest woman on earth because she had no children, and Orozkul beat her for that whenever he got drunk. And this made grandfather suffer, too, for Aunt Bekey was grandfather's daughter. She bought a few trifles and two bottles of vodka. And that was too bad— she was making it worse for herself. Grandma could not keep from hissing, so that the salesman would not hear:

"Asking for trouble?"

"I know what I'm doing," snapped Aunt Bekey.

"Fool," grandma whispered, gloating. If it were not for the salesman, she would have given Aunt Bekey a piece of her mind. They were forever bickering, those two.

Young Guldzhamal came to the rescue. She began to explain that her Seidakhmat was going into town soon and he would need the money, so she could not spend much now.

And so they bustled around the store truck, bought "a kopek's worth" of goods, as the salesman said, and went back to their homes. What sort of trade was that? The salesman spat after the women and began to arrange his disordered wares, preparing to leave. Then he noticed the boy.

"What is it, roundhead?" he asked. The boy had protruding ears, a thin neck, and a large round head. "Want to buy something? Hurry up, or I'll close shop. D'you have any money?"

The salesman spoke at random, having nothing better to do, but the boy answered respectfully:

"No, uncle, I have no money," and he shook his head.

"I think you do," the salesman drawled, feigning disbelief. "You're all rich around here, you're only pretending you're poor. . . . And what's in your pocket, isn't that money?"

"No, uncle," the boy answered as sincerely and seriously as before, turning out his torn pocket. (The other pocket was sewn up.)

"So you've lost your money. Look for it where you've ken playing, you'll find it."

They were silent awhile.

"Whose boy are you?" the salesman asked. "Old Momun's?"

The boy nodded.

"His grandson, eh?"

"Yes," the boy nodded again.

“And where's your mother?"

The boy said nothing.

"She never writes, does she? I guess you don't know yourself?"

"I don't."

"And your father? You don't know either?"

The boy was silent.

"How is it, friend, you don't know anything?" the salesman chided. "Oh, well, in that case, here." He held out a handful of candy. "And good-bye to you."

The boy drew back shyly.

"Take it, take it. Don't hold me up. I've got to go."

The boy put the candy in his pocket. He wanted to run after the truck, to see it out to the road, and he called Baltek to go with him. Baltek was a terribly lazy, shaggy dog. Orozkul always threatened to shoot him—why keep such a dog, he said. But grandpa kept begging him to wait. They'd get a sheep dog first, then he would take Baltek away somewhere. Baltek did not care about anything. When he had eaten, he slept; when he was hungry, he was forever toadying up to someone—his own masters, strangers, it made no difference, so long as they would throw him something. That's what kind of dog he was, this Baltek. But sometimes, out of boredom, he would run after cars. True, never very far. He'd just get going, then suddenly turn back and amble home. An unreliable dog. Still, whatever he was like, it was a lot more fun to run with a dog than without one.

Quietly, so the salesman would not see, the boy threw Baltek one candy. "Look now," he warned the dog, "we'll run a long way." Baltek whimpered and wagged his tail, waiting for more. But the boy did not dare to throw him another candy: the man might get offended; after all, he didn't give him a whole handful for the dog.

And then his grandfather appeared. The old man had been out to the beehives. From there he could not see the yard behind the houses. And now he just happened to come up in time, while the store truck was still there. Just by chance. Or else his grandson would not have gotten the schoolbag. The boy was lucky that day.

Old Momun, whom clever people had nicknamed Obliging Momun, was known to everyone in the district, and he knew everyone. He had earned his nickname by his invariable friendliness, his constant readiness to do things for people, to help everyone. And yet, his diligence was not appreciated, just as gold would not be appreciated if it were given away free. Nobody treated Momun with the respect due people of his age. He was treated without ceremony. At funeral feasts for eminent old men of the Bugu clan—Momun was a Bugan and very proud of it, and he never missed the funeral feasts for his clansmen—he would be asked to slaughter cattle, to meet honored guests and help them dismount, to serve tea, and even to chop wood and carry water. There are plenty of things to do at great funeral feasts, attended by many people from all parts of the country. Momun did everything he was asked quickly and easily; he never refused, like others. The young women of the village, who had to receive and feed the horde of guests, would say as they watched Momun at work:

"What would we have done without Obliging Momun?"

And so it would turn out that the old man, who had come all that distance with his grandson, was placed in a role lit for a young fellow, a mere helper. Anyone else would die of humiliation, but Momun never minded at all.

And nobody wondered at the sight of old Momun serving the other guests—that's what he had been all his life, Obliging Momun. It was his own fault. And if any stranger asked how it was that he was running errands for the women -were there no young fellows in the village?—Momun would say:

"The dead man was my brother." (He considered all Bugans his brothers. But weren't they equally "brothers" to the other guests?) "Who else is to work at his funeral feast if not I? Aren't we all bound by kinship, from the time of our ancestral Mother herself—the Horned Mother Deer? And she, the miraculous Mother Deer, had bidden us to be friends in life and in memory . . ."

That's what he was like, Obliging Momun!

Old and young addressed him with the familiar "thou." You could play jokes on him—he was never offended; you did not have to take him into account—he was a gentle, mild old man. No wonder it's said that people don't forgive those who do not know how to compel respect. And he didn't know how.

There were many things he did know. He knew carpentry and saddlemaking. He knew how to stack hay; when he was younger, he would build such haystacks that people would be sorry to break them up in winter: rain slid off the stacks as off the back of a goose, and snow lay on them like a sloping roof. During the war, as a member of the labor brigades, he worked as a bricklayer in Magnitogorsk, building factories; he was considered one of the best workmen. When he returned, he built wooden houses in the forest district and looked after the forest. Although listed as a helper, it was he who watched the forest, while Orozkul, his son-in-law, spent most of his time visiting his cronies. Except when the authorities came up—then Orozkul would be the master, showing them the forest, arranging hunting parties for them. Momun also tended the livestock and worked with the beehives. His whole life was spent in working and taking care of this and that from morning until night, and yet he never learned how to make people respect him.