The little boy cried louder and louder.
„Aysha, feed him, perhaps he’s hungry,“ said the shepherd quietly and turned to us. „Please, you have hardly had anything to eat.“
There was a gentle apologetic smile upon his face, the courageous, weathered face. Aysha took her son into her arms. I was horrified. The little boy’s crown was almost wide-open and there something was pulsating, throbbing, alive. I rushed outside. A large, shaggy dog, who was getting under my feet, was good-naturedly barking at something in the distance. I walked across the dark yard and threw up round a corner. What is happening to us? What abyss are we falling into? Why are we bringing the end of the world closer, with our own hands?
At that moment, the earth trembled and we heard a muffled roar. The little one was right. They have started IT again. The little one was right.
A horse was tethered to the rail. He stood stock-still as if nothing special was happening in the world. But when I went up to him and stroked his body, the body of a working beast, accustomed to all kinds of hardships, he gratefully put his head on my shoulder; the horse breathed into my ear as if he was whispering some secret words known only to him.
In the mountains, a lone wolf began to howl.
Several barking dogs rushed towards the mountains.
In the sky, there were neither stars nor moon. Heavy clouds, hanging low over the foothills, increased the sensation of an oppressive darkness.
Pitch blackness. I could not see anything.
In the house, the boy incessantly cried. He must have gone mad even before he appeared into the world.
And I too felt that. I would go mad only from the thought of what was happening.
I was unable to close my eyes till the morning. And the house was silent. The master and mistress and my friend had fallen asleep, and the little one, next to whom my bed was laid out, had calmed down.
Memories, thoughts, like wild horses, trampled over me. In that deathly silence, I lay muttering fiercely and agrily:
„No, it won’t be my fate to lie quietly in my grave when I die. When I die, let them scatter my ashes over the steppe and in my native Genghiztau. That is my one and only request. As long as sorrow and suffering are my people’s fate, I will not rest. I will not rest!“
My eyes wide-open, I stared into the darkness; I had the sensation of being scattered through my native land by the wind, like warm ashes. The ashes – the remains of the body – but what of the soul? Where does my soul fly? Will it meet the soul of little Kenje in the universe? Will our souls merge? Tell me, Father.
