Translated by: Polina Stopel-Beise:
Excerpt of the novelette: „Cenraur Syndrome“ – Из повести „Синдром Кентавра“
Published in: „New World“; Nr. 7, 2015 – Опубликовано в журнале Новый Мир, номер 7, 2015
Sakhariev Adilkhan Kazhmuratovich was born in 1982 in the city of Sarkand, Almaty region (Kazakhstan). He graduated from the journalism department of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. He is also a graduate of the literary master class of the Musaget Public Foundation (2002), a participant in the Literary Festival of Young Writers of Kazakhstan. Prose writer. He was published in Kazakhstani and international literary magazines and online publications. The story “Centaur Syndrome” was included in the long list of “Russian Prize” following the results of 2014. Lives and works in Taldykorgan. In the „New World“ – „Novyj Mir“ – is printed for the first time.
The Foreigner
Work showed up by itself. Buggy, leaving, offered to take his place. It was a private company specializing in various services of an intellectual nature. I, as an international student by education, was entrusted with translations. I had to remember half-forgotten English.
Labor was hellish. From morning till night I fumbled with heavy texts crammed with highly specialized terminology. When I did not have time, I sat above them at night. If you put everything translated together, you would get ten volumes, no less. It would be just as fruitful to write artwork! The management turned out to be very demanding and squeezed all the juices out of its employees. However, they paid a little. So it soon became clear to me, why Buggy had so easily and without any regrets left this work. On the other hand, such work was much more pleasant than bureaucratic fuss in the housing and communal services department. In addition, thanks to translations, I began to understand something in logistics, engineering, the oil and gas sector and various other themes.
Over time, my boss began to trust in more responsible matters – assigned to foreign clients as a simultaneous interpreter. At first, I was delighted with the opportunity to talk with foreigners: you drive around in luxury cars, dine in expensive restaurants and even get paid for it. Who doesn’t like this? However, very soon their society began to weigh me. They behaved for the most part equally boring: fake smiles, arrogant appraising glances (so, probably, Columbus once looked at the Indians), endless conversations about money. Although what did I expect from them? After all, they came here to make money.
Once the chef gave me a special task. Sending to a meeting with a client, he ordered me to be as courteous as possible, to try to please in everything, because he was not a simple tourist, but a person well known in medical circles. He even threatened: if the client is dissatisfied, then I shall no longer appear at work. And he knew how to keep his word.
The name of the foreigner was sonorous, beautiful – Esteban Jose Camino. I thought that he would have a similar appearance – a kind of tanned, muscular macho in the prime of life, with a graceful appearance of a bullfighter and the temperament of a flamenco dancer. But the foreigner was not at all what I imagined him to be. The ordinary, lean old man, looking more like a northern European, than a descendant of El Sid: pale, without the slightest hint of a southern tan skin, with an elongated „horse“ face, even bright white greyness, which is quite typical for aged blondes. He sat in a hotel restaurant and had breakfast. He was wearing a light monophonic T-shirt and shorts, of which thin bare legs sticked out, with sharp knees as a dystrophic teenager usually has. His appearance did not fit into the grandiose interior of the restaurant. Like a stain on a luxurious, expensive carpet. However, I, too, did not seem to impress him very much. He gave me an indifferent look, greeted me dryly, and again buried himself in his plate. I had no choice but to wait patiently for the end of the meal. And he ate, as is characteristic of the elderly, slowly, unhurriedly, like a ruminant.
“At least he behaves naturally and does not have the habit of falsely smiling,” I reassured myself, looking at the foreigner’s chewing mouth.
He was a typical representative of a new formation of nomads. I have met people like him back in my student years, when I worked as a volunteer in various international forums. They can be recognized at first glance: they dress practical, discreet, but tasteful, almost always travel light, with only hand luggage, to make it easier to move around the world. They give the impression of people being internally free and self-sufficient. In whatever corner of the world they are, wherever they live, everywhere they feel at home. And their home is a place where they feel good and comfortable at the moment, whether it is a hotel room, a rented apartment or an airplane. Their whole life is on the road and on flights. They do not stay anywhere for long. They are used to constantly living abroad, somewhere far awy from their home country (if they have one, of course) and usually do not try to make friends, but if they do, they part with them easily and without regrets.
The old man looked tired. His tiredness revealed itself in nearly everything: in the pose in which he sat – hunched over, leaning his whole body on his elbows, in languid slow motion, in his gaze – his eyes were red, swollen, like people who had not slept for several days in a row. Maybe, he kept on being so unkind towards me, because of this fatigue.
Finally, the old man finished breakfast and started to talk. Anyway, he’s been talking as slowly as he ate. The foreigner said that he was in our country for the first time and that he had arrived at the invitation of local medical scientists, that he already spent a whole week discussing possible joint projects and, that he was giving lectures on cardiac surgery. I also found out that the receiving party has arranged translators for him.
– So, then why you need me?
– There is a certain site I am going to. You will accompany me as my personal translator. I need an independent man, so that there won’t be inappropriate conversations. I do not want to entangle personal affairs with my professional function.
The news that a mysterious mission awaits me was intriguing, and I could not resist and pryed out:
– And what kind of personal affairs?
– More about this later.
– I hope this has nothing to do with crime or espionage? – I tried to joke.
– No, it has nothing to do with it. – he answered absolutely seriously.
We exchanged some further meaningless phrases and adjourned agreeing on our next meeting in few days; by that time he shall have finished his work.
We met in the same hotel-restaurant. My working-day turned out to be extremely stressful. My boss had transfered a huge mass of documentary work to me, which I had to translate as soon as possible and to send it to our customers. So I had to sit upon these translations until late night without having time for a meal or for a smoke.
To our rendezvous with the foreigner i appered being exhausted, angry and hungry. Mr. Camino, possibly mentioning my tiredness, invited me for dinner! Naturally, I had nothing against such an idea. But the portion, disgustingly, was restaurant-like – very small, just enough to get it on one tooth, and caused even more appetite.
Not having eaten enough and even more outraged i started to rake away everything that was on our table. But – there was only an aperitif on it.
I was aware about that fact, that drinking on an emty stomach might bear consequences, but I’d allways thought, that I can control myself and stop when this becomes necessary. Moreover, the whiskey was realy good – went down warmly and mildly – but my temper was rather terrible, so I had to shorten up this long and boring evening somehow. Facilitating, the whiskey became even better and I did not mention how I bacame drunken. Ad when I did, it was too late. I became talkactive and eager for a conversation, but the old man kept on being relentless silent. And it made me extremely nervous. This situation was unbearable for me and i had started murmuring and scolding him in my own language. His reaction followed immedeately. Suddenly he fixated me with his colourless eyes, looking askane at me, suspiciously, and bursted out in Hispanic:
– I am honestly apologizing that i have taken your working-time. – he added,
– But i do not like poor conversations!
– So, you understand me?!
– Foulish language is an universial language! – he pointed out and blured out smiling.
– Anyone will understand it!
Maybe, because i was sloshed, it seemed to me that he was scoffing at me. Not thinking about any consequences i mocked at him:
– Where you’ve got all that self-conceit and arrogance from? What makes you better than us?!
– Absolutely nothing! Maybe the fact that I’ve got more grey hair! – the old kept on explaining, demonstrating his perfectly plained and even white teeth (apparently false).
– Don’t play a fool, Signore! You know exactly what i am about!
– Simply call me Esteban!
– What kind of difference does it make, what your name is?! It is just the same about all of you! You wanna get us under your law and your legislation, make us believe into your God, celebrating your holidays and impose your truth and your way of life on us! What, for hell, are you going to achieve? Assimilating us?
The next morning I woke up absolutely trashed. I remembered the last night and felt even worse. I was nearly sure that the old man had called my employer and that I had allready lost my job. But you can’t imagine how surprised I was when I walked out of my appartment watching at professor Camino waiting for me infront of the porch (entrance). And there was not even a shadow of offence in his eyes!
– How You’ve found out, where i’m living?
– I brought you home last night. – he told. – We must go!
– Where to? – I wandered.
– Where? On our trip!
– I can’t remeber that we agreed on anything yesterday!
– Actually, your constituency was not realy satisfacting, so you can’t remeber anything. – he mentioned ironically.
– I am honestly sorry for what happened yesterday!
– When I was in your age I got up with things even worse! – he smiled inertly and got into the pickup.
Our driver was a well-set, middle-aged man! He took my stuff and put it into the carrier which was chocked with food. When i had seen all that proviant, i realized that we had a long way before us.
– Your name is Azat, isn’t it?
– Yea!
– And I am Toktar! – the man reached out his hand.
– It was me, who asked your boss for you! We are good friends!
Toktar made a friendly impression on me! He was open, talkactive. You won’t feel bored on a trip with someone like him.
– So! Where are we going to?
– To a village that does not realy exist anymore! – I just wanted to ask him some further questions but in this moment a dissatisfied mien of professor Camino looked out of the window and urged us to get into the pickup.
It was a long way, for real! Maybe few hundreds kilometres, maybe thousand. Acceptable country roads endet soon and changed into off road. The driver had to slow down and inbetween, on some completely destroyed road-intervals, to keep on with the pace of a tractor. Our journey turned out to ba a sad, endless long shattering. But even that could be tolerated if there was not such an exhausting heat of forty degree. The asphalt was literaly melting away under the scorching sun. Stuffness was our biggest problem. Don Esteban had to suffer at most. And his face, already pale, became death-ashen. But he held on. He was watching distantly out of the window, going with the steppe drowning in a sultry midday haze, sinking into his own memories. Obviously, he must had had serious reasons to travel such a long distance to the unknown back of beyond to risk with his own health.
– Are you alright? – I asked him when I had mentioned that he was putting some drugs under his tongue.
– Will be fine in few minutes.
– Please tell me, where it hurts exactly?! – the driver asked him worrysome (and I translated him).
– Sounds amusing?! – the professor smiled sorrowly. – I’m a doctor by myself, but my own health is wracking in a downward spiral.
– You should rather go back and be hospitalized.
Our driver slowed down again.
– No! – Esteban refused. – I’ve not made such a long journey to turn around on the last accord!
– If something happens to you, I will be made respobnsible!
– Than stop the car! – Esteban stated harshly. – I’ll get out!
The driver pressed his lips together as if he was trying to hold back his emotions and sharply pushed the gas-pedal. Advantageously, it was not that far anymore. In a local medical-obsteric center Esteban received firs aid and soon felt better.
Thereafter we headed for the relatives of our steersman and they met us with a characteristic for all kazach people deep cordiality. The Dastarhan, spread out by tradition on a low table, was rich and varied with salads for every taste and all kinds of meat delicacies, and beshparmak (made from a lamb sloughtered on the ocassion of our arrival), so that my eyes were running wide. Our outlandish guest was offered an honourable place. The host, a senile and bent old man, regardless of his age (he was older than Esteban) started to arrange for him, put the most delicious dishes on his plate and when the lamb’s head was brought in, he explained to him all the fineness of its cutting.
– Is it your father? – I asked Toktar-aga, who had been sitting nearby.
– Grandfather! – he answered! – He is ninety and has a great vocal!-
– You must be glad! – I told kind of jealously
.- Why you think so?
– Because you’ve got a grandfather!
Toktar looked satisfied and relaxed, actually, exactly how he had to, fortunately arriving afer a long-hours off road trip and a long awaited meeting with his family, and i thought, that it was time to find out the real reason of our journey.
– I do not know either! – he uttered and shrugged puzzeled.
– He’s told me anythingat at all. One day he had called me and asked me to find out where this village is. So i had turned over all archives, asked all my friends, before i had finally found it out. It turned out that it is not that far away from my native manor. Kind of coincidece!
– What is your interest in all that?
– I’ve got an irritrievable debt infront of him. He has saved my son’s life – he’s made an operation because of a deadly heart disease my son had.
– And how long do you know each other?
– For ten years, I suppose!
– And how could you communicate with each other all that time?
– With the help of my son! But right now he is studying abroad, so he can’t join us (accompany). That’s why you’ve had to take his place.
Reclining on soft, downy pillows he’s been drinking his bouillon and hot coumys and even perked up a little bit and became cheerful, trying to make jockes. And, by the way, I was surprised, because i used to know him absolutely different. Though, his tiredness and unhealthyness had not disappeared. He simply put them byside for some time.
At the beginning the villagers kept on being some kind of sceptical towards their overseas guest, constrained by mistrust – an attitude that had also been transferred towards me as his „accomplice“.
But Don Esteban turned out to be so winsome that it had not taken so long and they „melted“ away. Not much later they were singing „BesameMucho“ and „Bella, Ciao“. And somehow it was unimportant whether someone could not hold the right tone or simply did not know the right words. And then when it was time for a solo, the old aksakal, the grandfather of Taktar-aga, sighed out „Karangy tunde Taugalgyp“*(1). His voice sounded weakly and tensioned, but at the same time soulfully. The room filled with silence. Even the children became calm. Don Esteban turned thoughtful and sad again.
– I heard this song in my youth, – remembered the foreigner, when the aksakal had finished.
– Where you’ve heared it? – someone of the inmates asked him.
– In France! A native of these lands was singing it. His name was Jean, the son of Asana.
The inhabitans of the house were silent – they were too young to know the person the foreiner was talking about. The answer came from the high aged householder:
– My grandson has told me, that you are going to the village „Dzansengira“. But unfortunatelly, no one lives there anymore. There is only the cemetery left. I’ve allready explained to Toktar how to get there. It is just one hour away from here.
– You had been aquinted to him? – Don Esteban asked.
– Yes! A little bit. But we belonged to different generations and manors and therefore our paths rarely crossed.
– Is there anyone of his relatives, who is still alive?
– No one of them lives anymore. Some decayed in labour detention camps, some in prisons, some starved to death, and the last, his orphan nephews, died on the front. They were my fellows.
Night time. We were placed in the same room. Don Esteban lay down on a sofa, Toktar – aga and me arranged ourseves on the floor. Our driver immedeately started to snort. To the contrary, our professor could not sleep at all. You could hear how he had been tossing and turning from side to side silently sighing. I could not sleep either. Maybe, because I couldn’t get used to an unfamiliar bed, or maybe, because I was simply overstrained.
– Are you also suffering from insomnia? – the voice of the foreigner reached out of the dark.
– I think, that it might be not uninteresting for you, why we are here, – he’s noticed after a short hasitation.
– Right! But why you’ve decided to tell me about it just right now?
– I was afraid to open up before time. It could go wrong. – the old admitted.
– At night, it is the best time for revelations. It is dark and there is no need to watch into the eyes of your companion.
– Yes! – Don Esteban nervously sneered.
– I’m feeling like a repentant sinner confessing to a priest.
We layed in the pitch darc, each one in his own corner, looking into the ceiling. I was listening and he was talking.
Don Esteban’s April
All my life i’ve tryed not to do anyone anything evil. I’ve tryed to live up to the people’s and God’s laws. Ant it seems to me that i was not a bad person. But apparantly, in heaven, they are thinking differenly. Like you, as you’ve managed to notice, i am suffering from isomnia. And this is going on for a long time, for several years now. I had done a lot of things to get rid of it. I took all kinds of soporiferous narcotics, sinned with alcohol and tryed to get help from psychologists. But nothing helps. And if i finally manage to forget myself for a short while, I have just the same dream in which i am running after a silhouette disappearing in the dark, and, not able to catch her up, i am starting to cry. This crying brought me to the kazach steppe. Insomnia has started to stalk me after my last operation; from that time on i am not practicing chirurgy anymore. My patient was a ten year old girl with an innate heart disease. She needed an emergency operation. The chances for a successful outcome were low. But we had no choice. We made a medical examination of her physiological conduct and found no contradicting or adversive facts and took her to the operation room. While we were prepairing, she did not take her eyes from me: there was neither fear, nor anxiety in her dark, fathomless eyes, except sadness. As if she knew, that she was going to leave all and wanted to tell farewell. And i felt awkward. Something changed inside of me. Something was breaking out of the deepest corners of my memory, long forgotten snapshots, and for a moment i thought, that it was someone else looking at me, someone out of my past, but i was too busy to pay to much attention to that. Then she was anesthetized and fell asleep. The operationn lasted for eight hours and was hard and nerve-tracking. We all hoped, her little heart will withstand it. However, a miracle did not happen. When it was all over, I ran out to the coordinating room for not to see this sinister metamorphosis. It was always painful to see, how easily and quickly the human body, that just recently moved, walked and danced, turned into a lifeless mass. I put my hands under the tap, under hot water and, looking into the mirror, I was suddenly horrified, how tired and indifferent towards everything my eyes had become at the sunset of my life. This was not what I was striving for crossing the treshold of the medical university for the first time. It was not what I had expected. Dreams of life-saving, of great things and deeds, dreams of something great and important. Who could have imagined that in old age my dreams will be replaced by a deep disappointment and a feverish desire to be saved by my own…
My parents were socialist republicans and after their defeat in civil war they left Spain. We had a vagabond way of life for a long time. We strayed from town to town, from country to country. Not getting used to a new home, we already left for our next. First we had been hiding from Franco’s people, then, when the Second World War started, from the fascists. And where ever we headed for, the brown plague breathed down our necks. As my father had had enough of fleeing, he joined the resistance movement. And when he died – mining a railway-bridge – me and my mother had to go on the run again. But even after the ceasefire, my mother could not stay anywhere for a long time. Apparently, it became a habit. As a result, this habit was transferred to me. As far as I can remember, there was always a constant change of faces and scenery. Temporary housing, temporary friends, everything was temporary.
In my last semester at the University of Paris, where we had moved to directly after the establishment of peace, I was sent as a trainee to a municipal hospital in one of the subburban districts of the capital. Dr. Herz, a tall, husky German, who had emigrated in the 30ies of the 19th century out of political constrains and believes, was secretly healing the enemies of his fascist compatriots in the underground. He got attached to me and did not let me do even one step without him. That is how my internship slid into a full time job. Like a circus horse, day by day I was running in a vicious circle: coordination room – hospital wards – operation hall. My job was severe, but I liked it.
On that evening there were especially many things to do. At the end of the working day I literally fell from my legs completely exhausted. Herz, watching at me, was laughing in a warm natured manner. Leastwise, he had something to compare with. An unknown young man broke into our cabinet . He was confused and desolate. And there was a young woman he brought in – not breathing.
– She felt down in the middle of the street. Just in front of a car. – he’s explained, as if justifying – a young, sleek, rosy-cheeked man, dressed from the needle.
We, Herz and me together, started to reanimate her. And soon she came to herself. She encircled us with a languid, slow glaze, tried to get up but the old doctor asked her to lay down for a while. She was a fragile, comely Asian woman, as if taken out of an oriental engraving. And even her pale complexion and bags under her eyes could not spoil her beauty. The rosy-cheeked young man could not get his eyes from her. He smiled compassionately, sympathetically and even lustfully.
– Right, she is our patient! – told Herz, initially observing the patient and added, as if he was going to reassure the young man:
– There are no fractures or injuries.
The young man, anticipating her diagnosis, was suddenly in a hurry – he’s told, that he was late for a meeting; exchanging few words with the woman, who now was completely aware of herself, promised that he would visit her in few days and hurried off. Soon, Herz also left: he was urgently summoned to the ward – one of the patients got worse. I stood with the young woman and kept on checking her trough. Suddenly, the light went off – in those first years, after the end of the war, that happened quite often. I looked for some candles. Rummaged around, looked through the ambries and the shutters, finally found and ignited them. Evidently, to ease such an uncomfortable situation, the woman started to explain, how unfortunate she had always been: one time she wrenched out her leg without any further impact, or there were heart attacks in most inappropriate moments. And she was talking so freely , even with self-irony, that you could think, that she was amused about all that. But for me her revelations became a confession.
– What is your name?
– Ajperi!
– Kind of a strange name!
– I am a Kazach woman! – mentioning my quandary she added, – From The Sovjet Union.
I had previously met people from the UdSSR. In Spain, these were military instructors who trained my father and his comrades to fight; in France – white immigrants. They were all stalwart, blonde and light-eyed. Maybe this is why I had thought that in the land of the Soviets all people have a slavic appearance. And I was quite surprised finding out that this frangible, black-eyed Asian woman came from there.
– And do you have a second name?
– Why? You do not like this one?
– It is beautiful! But it is difficult in pronunciation (to spell it out)! – I hastened to explain to her.
– My name, for example, is Esteban Jose. In honor of Echeverria! So you can call me both ways.
– It’s probably great to have two names at the same time. It is like living two lives. But I have only one.
– May I then call you Abril?
– I like it. It sounds so … tender!
She smiled. Ans this smile, magically making the candle-light shining brighter, seemed to me so familiar and so desired, as if I had been waiting for it out of the nothingness for hundreds of years and was born just to see this smile.
I asked about the rosy-cheeked young man – as if to encourage our conversation. But for real, everything shrunk inside of me out of tension. I could not compete with him. He was rich, successful, drove around in his own car, and I cooked dinner by myself and darned my socks. But Abril dispelled all my fears, saying that she did not even know his name.
I, abided by my profession, should had advised her not to dissipate her energies or squander them by conversations, but I really wanted to listen to her wonderful, gentle voice. And so we sat, chatting about trifles in a dark room, lit by only a dying candle – she forgot about her sick heart, and I that other patients were waiting for me – until they gave light. Hertz returned, followed by someone else from the medical staff. They were outraged that they had turned off the electricity, and prophesied that one day someone would die on the operating table because of this. The office immediately filled with a hubbub, it was somehow too light and noisy.
Abril was put into the ward that very evening. Hertz assigned me to her, of what I, of course, was incredibly glad.
So our acquaintance with Abril became closer. Several times a day I went to her ward to learn about her well-being, even on weekends. I made sure that she took medication on time and complied with the regimen. And when her constitution improved, I took her outside to breathe fresh air. Walking through a quiet autumn park, which was vestured with leaves and acorns, we spent hours with leisured conversations. We had a lot in common: similar habits, similar characters, similar fates.
She, like me, left her homeland as a child. Her family, who had fled from the tyranny of the Bolsheviks before coming to France, came from almost half the continent. Over the years of wandering, one after another, her mother, brothers and sisters passed away.
– There, on the road, I should have died, not them. They were stronger than me. Life is a strange thing, isn’t it? – she said, smiling sadly, and I did not know how to answer her.
One clear autumn day, wanting to brighten up her dull hospital leisure, I discharged her from Hertz and her into the city. It was the „Chestnut Week“. We walked along the malls, bought roasted chestnuts and spices and headed for the promenade. On the way, we looked into a souvenir shop. I brought her there for one reason – I wanted to make some kind of present to her. I decided on what she likes best. But, to my great surprise and frustration, she was not interested in jewelry or beautiful trinkets, as i expected, but in a giant globe standing on the floor, right in the middle of the store. Abril squatted down and eagerly began to search for something on him.
– Where would you like to go to? – I asked.
I supposed to hear something like Rio or Venice, which any woman dreams of, but she surprised me again:
– Home!
– You don’t like it here?
– I do. But here I am feeling like a guest.
– What can you remember about your homeland if you left it quite small?
– By the way, the most vivid memories are those from the childhood. A child’s memory is very tenacious! – she said with a light, playful reproach. – Is it me who should explain it to you, doctor?
– Can you show me, where it is?
– Right here! – Twirling the globe, Abril jabbed a finger at the very middle of the Eurasian continent.
I had always been fond of history, since my school years I had loved spending free time reading historical books and reference books. About disappeared civilizations, forgotten knowledge, and the unsolved mysteries of mankind – all this worried my childhood imagination. It seemed to me that history, like any science, is subject to some of its own laws, and if you can distinguish between them, then you can predict the future. Once, while studying the map of the Ancient World, I came across a lone inscription: “Wild nomadic tribes”, stretched in large bold letters between the Caucasus and the Ancient East. Underneath was an equestrian archer. And there were no more signs – as if neither rivers, nor lakes, nor mountain ranges, on this huge land the size of a dozen states, had names, as if there had never been life on it, only ferocious wild warriors, uproaring and galloping back and forth, annihilating everything on their way. And I thought: „What a horror the mapmaker must have experienced when he wrote these words.“ And so, years later, fate brought me together with a woman, through whose veins blood of those same ancient nomads poured .
– It is sunny and beautyful there. Especially in spring! – she kept on inbetween and her voice has been gentle, subtile and full of shimmering sadness.
– I go out of the yurt in the morning and in front of me there is the endless prairie. I run barefooted, and the earth’s warmth is strocking my heels, and the prairie-winds are rushing my steps. And I feel as if I am flying.
I couldn’t buy her this globe. I had not enough money and was extremly disappointed about it. Ofcourse, Abril mentioned that and started to question me out – why. And when she finally got what she wanted (i couldn’t stand her onrushing charm and layed out everything), she bursted out laughing and kissed me on my cheek.
– Don’t be a fool! I do not even know where to put him on!
We made a long stray down the promenade, enjoyed the Seine and the passing river vessels and went to the cinema. And i still can’t remember the movy, because we were kissing during the whole session. On that evening you couldn’t find anyone more happier than me in this world. Abril did not stay in the hospital for long. Due to a lack of treatment capacities, more or less cured patients were immediately sent home. However, in spring she had to undergo a second course of treatment.
– Poor girl. – said Hertz, who had no idea about our relationship with her. – We can only support her heart.
– Is there really nothing we can do?
– An operation might help. But we would put her life at risk, therefore, in her case, an operation is hardly justified.
Regrettably, medicine of that time was mightless against Abril’s disease. Even the best cardiac surgeons in France, whom Hertz and I addressed for help, did not dare to undertake such a difficult operation. All what remained was to protect Abril day and night and pray to God for her health. Ah, if modern treatment methods were practiced half a century before!
Months of separation seemed unbearably long. Time dragged on slowly and sluggishly. I tried to look aside: I loaded myself with extra work, went on overtime duty, but it did not help. My ardent desire for Abril did not let go even for a minute. Of course, I realized that falling in love with my patient, all the more, suffering from a serious illness, was on my part completely imprudent. But what could I do? I decided on an even more reckless act: I found her home address in the registration book and went straight to her home. She lived, as it turned out, not far from the hospital, in one of the destitute neighborhoods attached and adorned with love by immigrants from former colonies.
I Knocked. A sickly male voice with a strong accent reached out from behind the door. I asked for Abril. The door opened and an old man appeared in front of me. A stern Mongolian face, heavy low eyelids, thick fused eyebrows that made his look wary and cold. The man leaned on a cane, one leg was somehow unnaturally bent in his knee. I introduced myself. I, fulminantly, came up with the most rediculous reason for my visit: allegedly, there was a decision to ask about patients who had been released from hospital. The owner of the house continued to keep me on the threshold, as if waiting for something. I was already regretting that I had been so foolish coming to Abril’s home. It seemed to me that he was able to read thoughts and knew why I actually was here. The situation was retrieved by a woman who appeared behind him. Seeing me, she exclaimed:
– Jean, invite the guest into the house. Do not keep him in the cold!
The man reluctantly stepped aside and let me go forward.
– Please, excuse my husband, he is deaf. – the woman said innocently, inviting me into the living room.
Abril felt delighted by my appearance, but at the same time she was too shy to show her joy in front of her family. She blushed in abashment and, giving me a lambent glance, ran away to make tea. I was left alone with the married couple. Fortunately, the hostess of the house, a lively, able to win over woman, engaged me into a conversation and made almost any pauses inbetween.
In the parlour, a tiny and dim room, there was practically no furniture – no table, no chairs, no bed. They were replaced by homespun carpets and blankets spread out on the floor, variegated, patterned, painted with ornate horn-like ornaments. The dilapidated bookcase – the only furniture – was filled with books written mostly in Arabic script. Finally, Abril came. She brought tea. I decided to recall the purpose of my visit and expressed concern about Abril’s health. The woman began cursing her kindly:
– Stubborn! How many times we’ve told her not to walk alone in the city. She’s never listening. – the mistress of the house suddenly faltered. Her eyes instantly filled with moisture.
– Oh, it is fairly enough! – Abril tryed to sooth her.
– Sorry, honey. You know, how maudlin I am. The woman gathered the cups of unfinished tea and hastily left. Apparently, feeling ashamed of her tears.
– She always remembers her son when it comes to my health. – Abril explained to me.
– He died of pneumonia about halfway between Afghanistan and Iran. Probably the worst thing is to outlive your own children.
– Is she your stepmother?
– No, my younger mother.
– How is that? – I was surprised.
– My father had two wives! – Abril explained. – Here, polygamy is kind of ferocity, but for us – the norm.
The hostess returned soon. She became just the same smiling and friendly woman again.
– Maybe you can take a look on my husband and check him, because he has completely lost his condition in recent times? – she asked.
– Of course, madam!
– How kind of you. Maybe you will become our family doctor? – she’s told facetiously. As it seemed, she knew how to get advantage out of new acquaintances.
– Why not! Her proposal has, of course, served my satisfaction.
I started with the examination of the head of the family and parallely navigated him trough a standard set of questions regarding his well-being. But, actually, his wife answered for him. All this time the hoseowner glumly looked somewhere to the side. His body could tell a lot: a streaked and scarred back, a scarred trace from a perforating shoot in his shoulder, lameness. Life planty trashed him. Even with a quick inspection, you could find a whole bunch of neglected diseases. But the most serious ailment was his fathomless, hopeless anguish. He was a few years over fifty, and looked like a deep old man. I prescribed him some medications to lower blood pressure, and leeches and advised him to undergo an examination in the clinic, because I needed to find the reasons for his hypertension. But we both knew that he will not follow my advice.
According to the stories of Abril, his ancestors were not that wealthy pastoralists. He had a small farm, bred horses and sheep. His life was smooth, measured and, it seemed, and haralded no unexpected changes. But after the October Revolution, his quiet felicity came to an end. The new government took away almost all his property: land, livestock, valuables. Many of his neighbors leaved. But he accepted these changes with stoic humility and decided that it was better to live an indigent life in his native land than as a rich man in a foreign land. Monsieur Jean hoped that he would manage to get along with the Soviets. Nevertheless he undertook an attempt to actively help them with the construction of kolkhozes. However, he could not get along with that new proletarian society. The Soviets reminded him about his middle-class descent and sent him to labor camps. At first, when he returned home a few years later, after serving his sentence, famine raged , and then, as if by chain reaction, another wave of repression flooded the country. By that time he had already heard about the executions of “The enemies of the people” and persecution of their families, and therefore, having barely returned from places of detention, he gathered his relatives and hastily migrated out of the country. But life in foreign lands was not better: some countries were war torn, elsewhere epidemics of deadly diseases raged out, and besides that, sometimes they simply were not welcome. Living a vagabond life for many years, enduring deprivation and adversity, greaving about the death of loved ones and longing for his homeland – all this seriously undermined his health.
– You seem not to be from the locals either? – asked Monsieur Jean.
The question took me by surprise. And instead of giving a concrete answer, I began to talk indistinctly and erratically about myself.
– This means, you are a communist. – the old man made an unexpected conclusion.
Abril later told me, that every time he’s mentioned me, he titled me: „Your Communist.“
– I’m not a communist.
– Well, since your family members are Communists, so are you.
– And who – are you? – I snapped.
– Me?! I am no one! Already noone! – He suddenly flared up.
Monsieur Jean himself seemed to be frightened about his sudden anger, because his gaze immediately became guilty. An awkward silence reigned. I got up and began to hastily say goodbye.
– Do not take it too close to your heart. This happens to him sometimes. The hostess tried to get the tension out of the situation once again.
At the door, when I was already leaving the house, Monsieur Jean stopped me:
– Would you like to go back? – His hand tightly, painfully squeezed my palm.
– To Spain? I’m afraid, for Spain I’ll stay always a stranger!
His look, extinguished, and his hand sliding will-less down, he remained standing on the threshold, lost and wilted. I left. Abril caught me up on the street: she “revealed” infront of me — in scuffs and in a light coat hastily thrown over her shoulders.
– You will catch a cold, you should not make fun with your health. – I said, and taking her hand, I made a quick step back home.
– He liked you.
– But it seemed differently to me. (But I had another impression).
– It only seemed.
Indeed, our relationship with her father improved noticably with time. You could even say, became hearty. Our relationship started to change from the moment on i visited them again, due to a special emergency. It was not him, who invited me, but due to Abril’s urgend request . She was in panic and cried and explained to me that her father’s health extremely worsened . Of course, I could not refuse helping her.
Indeed, Monsieur Jean’s health deteriorated. His blood pressure rose and his nose was bleeding non-stop. I gave him tablets and put a dropper, and soon the patient felt better. I was about to take him to the hospital, but the head of family refused.
– You were lucky: the blood went out. But the next time, maybe you won’t. – I told him. – – Why you had not at least taken the medicines I had prescribed?”
– An too expensive entertainment! – he answered in a choked voice.
Monsieur Jean has changed seriously these days. He became hollow-cheeked and limp. His features became sharp and angular. Yes, and he himself became somehow quite lethargic and dull. I looked at him and wondered: could a person who suffered so many hardships and adversities, be broken by hypertension? Although, quite possibly, the disease simply became the very last calculus which overthrew the balance on his scales.
– Hold on! – I tried to cheer him up, – I’ll watch for you later.
Tha’s how I became a frequent guest in his house. We talked a lot about life before war and what it means to preserve it in peacetime. Sometimes we disagreed, our points of view contradicted. He turned out to be an interesting and reasoning counterpart. However, Monsieur Jean did not read newspapers , but mostly old books, and was not very interested in news. Only in those about the Soviet Union, as if he’s been hopeful of return. But at the same time, news from his homeland more upset him than pleased him.
Him and his daughter were very close. It was enough to see how she cared for him; how she warmed his feet in mustard water, how she was giving him his hot milk and, how his eyes with touching tenderness replyed to her care. Their connection was more than consanguinity. They were, as the saying is, soul mates. And they clung to each other, like to the last straw. Abril’s father had a great influence on her. You could feel it: when she’d been statig her viewpoints, in her speech, even in her intonation, some kind of similarity always slipped through. Sometimes, in our conversations, it even seemed to me that I was not talking with my beloved woman, but with her father. But I was not jealous, because I understood: she had been not just his last survived child, she’d been perhaps the only one, who kept him in this world.
Once, while walking in a quiet winter park, we came across a monument to the heroes of the Resistance. It was all lined with wreaths and bouquets of flowers. Spreading willow branches hung from above. Abril brushed the snow off the marble tiles and began to read the names carved on it.
– They are lucky! – she said.
– They died – what luck do you see in this?
– They left unconquered, and they were buried in their native land. One can only dream of such a death.
– Don’t be silly.
Abril did not argue with me.
Instead, she told the legend of a brave warrior (and maybe a true story) that she had once heard from her father:
– He was strong and agile and had no equal on the battlefield. The glory of his deeds thundered throughout the steppe. And when the enemies attacked his country, he gathered his army and stood up for its defense. But it was a time of troubles, a time of intrigue and constant strife. The enemies conspired with the steppe’s nobables – they promised them a ceasefire and support in their dominion strife, and in return they craved for the warrior’s head. And the legend was given away and taken into captivity. However, before disappearing in a foreign land, he chopped off his finger and, chanting “At least something of me shall remain!”, he buried it in the ground. Never again anyone heard anything about him. But the warrior, who has been called «the Finger» since then, has forever remained in the people’s memory.
When Abril finished her story, for some reason I thought that probably her father is «the Finger».
– I would like, – said Abril, – to leave a part of myself there as well .
– And would go now without a finger! – I tried to joke, but when I met her eyes, I felt that it was an unchancy endeavour.
– Ah, if I were to go back at least for an hour!
– Definitely you will.
– But this is impossible. – Abril said sadly. – Please do that for me someday, okay? And when in heaven, tell me about everything!
– But I’m sure you’ll have an opportunity to get there. You still have your whole life before you!
– Just promise.
– Allright, I promise.
She became cheerful and light-hearted again. She satirized that she had completely tormented me with her nostalgy for the vast prairie. Though there were bitterness and pain hiding in her voice! After all, a trip back home for „the daughter of a homeland traitor was assured“. Like for me, the son of a Republican; – in Francoist Spain they continued to crack down on dissidents even in peacetime. I often thought about what besides love could tie us so close. We have different mentality, different religion. And I came to the conclusion that it was homesickness. After all, somewhere in the depths of my soul, perhaps even without noticing it myself, I was tormented by the same longing for the lost land of my childhood.
Our romance lasted about six months: stormy, impulsive, like, probably, everything that has a short term. We reveled in joint happiness like thirsty travelers who came upon the icy spring water – greedily, possessively, breathtakingly. Next to Abril, everything retrieved sense and regained its natural principals. Thanks to her, I recognized that someone’s happiness can’t be achieved without reciprocity and, what is even more important, only if both of you are willing to listen into each other’s soul. It was a wonderful time, perhaps the best thing that has happened to me in my entire life. But at the same time a kind of threatening, raw feeling flickered through my consciosness, that all this is too wonderful to last for long, and sooner or later I will have to pay for this fortune. My rival, my archenemy, secretive, treacherous, was always somewhere nearby, watching us from around the corner, patiently waiting in the wings to take Abril from me. And even in the moments of the highest happiness, I felt his cold breath behind me. How often I wanted to hide her from his all-seeing eyes, lock ourselves in a deep inscrutable bunker, seal the front door, close all the cracks so that no one and nothing could get into the world we created and destroy it, or sail away to an uninhabited island, unknown and virgin. But no bunkers of the world, no «distant distances» could save her from the Angel of Death. I remember one of our last evenings. And I remembered him because at that date I finally decided to make her an offer. I carefully prepared for this event: a candlelight-dinner for two with a view on the Seine: dim lights, red wine, lyric music and other attributes for a romantic evening. Of course, there is nothing original in organizing such an evening, but then all that seemed to me, to a poor young doctor, to be on top of chic. Abril arrived, as it is inherent characteristic for a quean, with some delay. She was wearing a hand-sewn, satin evening dress and long silver earrings made in ethnic style, which she’d inherited from her deceased mother. She all shone with some kind of inner warm light and was like a princess from the tales of “A Thousand and One Nights.” A strange, bashful timidity swept over me, and from excitement I forgot all the necessary words. Mercifully, the musicians arrived in time and attuned the romancero and its melody, instead of me, could tell Abril evrything. All I needed to do was proffering her the engagement ring. Her reaction was unexpected. Abril looked at me for several seconds in disbelief, as if she could not understand the meaning of my gesture, then, suddenly she kind of tensed up, turned purple and, covering her mouth with her hand, ran out to the street. I trailed behind her – completely deluded. She quietly cryed hiding in a dark corner.
– I already got used to my illness! – she said through tears, – But you’ve appeared and turned everything upside down. And now I don’t want to die at all.
– Who told you, that you are going to die?
– Even if I become old, why you should need such a sick wife? Do you realy want to coddle me?
– I’m a doctor. Taking care of others is my vocation!
Abril involuntarily smiled:
– Do not look at me. I must look awful now, ” she said feeling ashamed.
But from this I even more wanted to look at her, excited, reddened.
– Let’s just live and enjoy life. We’ll think about sad things later. – I said, putting the ring on her finger.
We went into an alley and agonized clung to each other with our lips. Breathing in and out as though we were one. And i was breathing her in, gasping with delight, lightheaded either from the wine, or from the aroma of her body.
I did’t want that ordinary, vicious tomorrow to come.
But, somewhen, tomorrow had inevitably to come. After a second course of treatment, Abril felt much better, and we, heaven-sent and winged, started preparing for our wedding. But suddenly her father died, died of a fit of apoplexy. Abril’s small timid heart could not outlive this last thrust of fate. That fatal morning I was at the workplace – I was about to hand over the post. She was brought unconscious. We run to reanimate her and made everything possible and impossible. But it looked as though she was not willing to fight. My worst enemy, my rival, the Angel of Death, ultimately took her from me. As it seems, at that moment I completely lost control of myself claiming her back into life, because Hertz forcefully pulled me away from Abril and gave me such a powerful slap that I was thrown against the wall.
– We must try it again! Once again! – I coudn’t stop.
– It is all o’er! You can’t bring her back!
Abril and his father were buried on a Muslim cemetery. I didn’t go to the funeral or to the commemoration. For my part, of course, it was wrong. But I didn’t care anymore. Since she’s died, I lost every interest in life. He abandoned his work, began to disappear in pubs where i’v been drinking until I got unconscious. Once Hertz came to me — he somehow managed to find me. Without greeting, he sat down in front of me. We kept silent for a long and heavy time. I stared into my bloody reflection in the glass, and he distractedly examined the visitors.
– Her mother continues to come to the hospital every morning, – Herz spoke up. – She sits for hours in the hallway thinking that if she keeps on waiting, her daughter will run out alive into her arms.
I still kept sullenly silent in response.
– She’s got no one anymore. – he continued, – You should visit and support her.
– The heart is a weird organ. – I said in a drunken voice. – Beating and beating on its own. And one day it decides to stop. And you do not know, when this will happen. Have you ever wondered why mortality from cardiovascular diseases is so high?
– The heart is a muscle of three hundred grams. Nothing else. – Hertz remarked angrily. – There aren’t enough doctors in the hospital, and you’re hanging around in pubs. Well, I can’t shelter you forever.
– So fire me.
– Listen, son, I understand that it hurts you now. A loved one died, and you could not help her in anything. But everyone goes through that. Everyone has to accept its mightlessness someday.
“How easily people get used to someone else’s death. How, in general, amazingly easy they get used … and wean again …
– During the years of war, I lost all my relatives, all my friends. I had seen so much of everything that if I had not forced myself to harden, I would have long gone mad.
– But it is peacetime now.
– You’ve chosen a profession in which you’re at war every day. So get it over. While we are chatting here, there, in the hospital beds, maybe someone is dying.
Finally, I returned to work. Whether the words of Hertz acted in this way, or the instinct of self-preservation worked out, which would, to be be more honest, was anything than ordinary cowardice – after all, a little more, and I would have completely ruined myself by drinking.
Since then, I’ve decided to hide all memories of Abril in the farthest corners of my mind. I thought that this way it was easier for me to get over the pain of loss. Actually, that’s what I’ve done. Insensibly, I began to forget our mutual rounds, our conversations, then her features began to fade away out of my memory. So, imperceptibly, my memory hand in hand disappeared with my feelings. But the nagging feeling of guilt has never left me.
After her, of course, there were other women. Relations with them developed in different ways. Some i loved less, others more. There were even children from two ex-wives. But none of these women hasitated in my life for more than a few years. Perhaps this is some kind of curse – to lose along the way those who are dear to you or who you are dear to. In the otcome, at the end of my life I was alone. And more and more often insomnia, followed by tantalizing dreams, was fretting me from inside. Whether God punishes me for the sins of my past in such a sophisticated way, or whether a belated conscience torments me, I don’t know. But at the end of my years, like probably any old man, I want peace, I want to die with a peaceful heart. Therefore, I am here, confessing to you.
– And what happens in your dreams? – I asked.
In my dream, I, quite young, run, trying to catch up with Abril, and the snow breacks down under my feet. I fall and get up again. And she looks a me, in her light coat, flushed with frost, with sadness and disappointment. And I cry out to her – „ Abril! Abril! How I missed you! ” Finally, reaching for her, I hasten to hug her, but she pulls me away. “Don’t kiss me. Don’t, ”she says. Then Abril slowly dissolves in the dark. And I stand in a daze, unable to do anything, even to get out a pitiful „Take me with you!“ , watching helplessly as she disappears.
The Return
We arrived at the devastated village in the early morning, when the sun had not yet risen above the horizon. It was surrounded by hilly distant lands, overgrown with grass and thistle bushes. The terrain was deaf and abandoned. And if there were no several dilapidated graves located on the slope of one of the hills, one would think that people never lived here. Don Esteban put his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out an elongated velvet case. There were old silver earrings inside of it.
– This is the only thing that I have kept from Abril. – he said. – It’s time to keep my promise. I have been postponing it for too long.
He took a shovel out of the carrier and headed for the cemetery. And there, choosing a place between the pise graves and falling to his knee, he began to dig a hole. It was a strange picture – a lonely old man in a deserted steppe digging a grave to his past.
Beyond the hills, where the sky touches the earth, daylight arouse, dissolving the predawn shade, revealing a breathtaking sight on the the silent, magnificent steppe. And at that moment a quiet, serene joy stole into me. How much sufferance this land endured, how many epochs have alternated here, how much blood and tears were shed here, but all that will never change her indefinite, pristine beauty. And it is fine that there is something in this world, that is beyond human control, lasting in eternaty, constant and superb and will outlive all. We have never been regents of the Earth and never will be. Eternity cannot have sovereigns. Rather, we are her inherent peculiarity.
– I’ve been ofte asked where I am from and where my home is! – Professor Camino returned back out of breath and tired. He flopped to the ground.
– Rather a common question. But I can’t answer it.
– Is it really so important for you? – I sit down next to him.
– In youth, you treat all this with indifference, maybe even with contempt. You wanna soar and float. But there can’t be an infinite levitation in life! – Don Esteban looked at the morning sky.
– Even vagabonds have a nest somewhere.
– Do you have one?
– I recently bought a grape plantation near Toledo. – the professor said, ripping off a branch of wormwood and smelling it.
– When I left, I asked my workers to keep the lights on in the villa. I’ll arrive there late at night, I will see the light in the window from afar, and maybe my soul will become warmer: what if someone is really waiting?
We got into the car and headed back. On the road, Don Esteban fell asleep – it was a sleep of a person who finally found his long-awaited peace. Soon, I followed his example. The sleep was so deep and long that on the way back I did not feel any potholes or bumps, and when I woke up, we were already approaching the city.
(1): “Karangy tyndde tau kalgyp” – a song of Abay Kunanbaev; the text of the song is a translation of the poem by M. Yu. Lermontov “Mountain peaks sleep in the darkness of the night …”, which, in turn, is a translation from Goethe.
