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Chingiz Aitmatov.

Part one

Following a short, light, like a child's breath, daytime warming on the mountain slopes facing the sun, the weather soon subtly changed - it began to wind from the glaciers, and the harsh early twilight was already creeping in through the gorges everywhere, carrying the cold grayness of the upcoming snowy night.

There was a lot of snow around. Throughout the Issyk-Kul ridge, the mountains were littered with a snowstorm that swept through these places a couple of days ago, like a fire suddenly blazing at the whim of a masterful element. It is terrible that it played out here - mountains disappeared in the blizzard, the sky disappeared, the entire former visible world disappeared. Then everything calmed down, and the weather cleared up. Since then, with the appeasement of a snow storm, the mountains, bound by great drifts, stood in a numb and frozen silence, detached from everything in the world.

And only the ever-increasing and ever-arriving rumble of a large-capacity helicopter, making its way in that evening hour along the Uzun-Chat canyon to the icy Ala-Mongyu pass, smoked in the windy heights by swirling clouds, kept growing, getting closer, growing stronger every minute, and finally triumphed - completely took over the space and floated with an overwhelming, thunderous roar over ridges, peaks, high-altitude ice inaccessible to anything but sound and light. Multiplied among the rocks and ravines by repeated echoes, the roar overhead was approaching with such inevitable and formidable force that it seemed a little more - and something terrible would happen, as then - during an earthquake ...

At some critical moment, this happened - from a steep rocky slope exposed by the winds, which turned out to be on the flight path, a small scree began to move, trembling from a sonic boom and immediately stopped, like charmed blood. This push to the unstable ground, however, was enough for several weighty stones, breaking off the steepness, to roll down, scattering more and more, spinning, raising dust and rubble after them, and at the very foot they broke through, like cannonballs, through the bushes of red and barberry, they broke through the snowdrifts, reached the wolves' lair, arranged here by the grays under the overhang of the rock, in a crevice hidden behind the thickets near a small, half-frozen warm stream.

Akbar's she-wolf recoiled from the stones that rolled down from above and the falling snow, and, backing into the darkness of the crevice, shrunk like a spring, raising her scruff and looking ahead of her with wildly burning in the semi-darkness, phosphorescent eyes, ready at any moment for a fight. But her fears were unfounded. It is scary in the open steppe when there is nowhere to escape from a pursuing helicopter, when, overtaking, it relentlessly chases on its heels, deafening with the whistle of propellers and hitting with automatic bursts, when there is no escape from a helicopter in the whole world, when there is no such gap where one could bury the troubled wolf's head, - after all, the earth will not part to give shelter to the persecuted.

In the mountains it is a different matter - here you can always ride away, there is always where to hide, where to wait out the threat. The helicopter is not scary here, in the mountains the helicopter itself is scary. And yet fear is reckless, all the more familiar, experienced. With the approach of the helicopter, the she-wolf whined loudly, gathered into a ball, pulled her head in, and yet her nerves could not stand it, she broke down - and Akbar howled furiously, seized by powerless, blind fear, and convulsively crawled on her belly to the exit, clanging her teeth angrily and desperately , ready to fight on the spot, as if hoping to put to flight the iron monster rumbling over the gorge, with the appearance of which even stones began to fall from above, as in an earthquake.

At Akbara's panicked cries, her wolf, Tashchainar, slipped into the hole, which had been there since the she-wolf became heavy, for the most part not in the den, but in a calm among the thickets. Tashchaynar - Stonebreaker, - nicknamed so by the surrounding shepherds for crushing jaws, crawled up to her bed and rumbled soothingly, as if covering her body from adversity. Squeezing sideways to him, pressing closer and closer, the she-wolf continued to whine, plaintively appealing either to the unfair sky, or to someone unknown, or to her unfortunate fate, and for a long time she trembled all over, could not control herself even after how the helicopter disappeared behind the mighty Ala-Mongyu glacier and it became completely inaudible behind the clouds.

And in this mountain silence that reigned at once, like a collapse of cosmic silence, the she-wolf suddenly clearly heard in herself, or rather inside the womb, living tremors. So it was when Akbara, still at the beginning of her hunting life, somehow strangled a large hare from a throw: in the hare, in her stomach, then the same movements of some invisible creatures hidden from the eyes were also felt, and this is a strange circumstance surprised and interested the young curious she-wolf, pointing her ears in surprise, looking incredulously at her strangled prey. And it was so wonderful and incomprehensible that she even tried to start a game with those invisible bodies, just like a cat with a half-dead mouse. And now she herself found in her insides the same living burden - those who, under a favorable set of circumstances, were to be born in a week and a half or two, made themselves known. But so far, the newborn cubs were inseparable from the mother's womb, they were part of her being, and therefore they also experienced in the emerging, vague, uterine subconscious the same shock, the same despair as she herself. That was their first remote contact with the outside world, with the hostile reality that awaited them. That is why they moved in the womb, thus responding to maternal suffering. They, too, were afraid, and that fear was transmitted to them by their mother's blood.

Listening to what was going on against her will in her revived womb, Akbara became agitated. The she-wolf's heart began to beat faster - it was filled with courage, determination to protect, to protect from danger those whom she bore in herself. Now she would not hesitate to grab anyone. The great natural instinct for the preservation of offspring spoke in her. And then Akbara felt a hot wave of tenderness flood over her - the need to caress, warm future suckers, give them her milk as if they were already at hand. It was a premonition of happiness. And she closed her eyes, groaned from the bliss, from the expectation of milk in her large, swollen to red, nipples protruding in two rows along her belly, and languidly, slowly, slowly stretched her whole body, as far as the lair allowed, and, finally calming down, again moved closer to her gray-maned Tashchainar. He was powerful, his skin was warm, thick and elastic. And even he, the gloomy Tashchainar, caught what she, the wolf mother, was experiencing, and with some instinct understood what was happening in her womb, and he, too, must have been touched by this. Putting his ear up, Tashchainar raised his angular, heavy head, and in the gloomy gaze of the cold pupils of his deep-set dark eyes, some kind of shadow flashed, some kind of vague pleasant foreboding. And he purred restrainedly, snoring and coughing, expressing his kind disposition and readiness to unquestioningly obey the blue-eyed she-wolf and protect her, and began diligently, affectionately licking Akbara's head, especially her shining blue eyes and nose, with a wide, warm, wet tongue. Akbara loved Tashchainar's tongue even when he flirted and caressed her, trembling with impatience, and his tongue, inflamed from a violent rush of blood, became elastic, fast and energetic, like a snake, although at first she pretended that it was her, at least indifferently, even when, in moments of calm and prosperity, after a hearty meal, her wolf's tongue was softly moist.

In this pair of fierce Akbara was the head, was the mind, she had the right to start hunting, and he was a faithful force, reliable, tireless, strictly fulfilling her will. These relationships have never been broken. Only once there was a strange, unexpected case when her wolf disappeared before dawn and returned with a strange smell of another female - the disgusting spirit of a shameless estrus, pitting and calling males for tens of miles, which caused her irrepressible anger and irritation, and she immediately rejected him, unexpectedly she plunged her fangs deep into her shoulder and, as a punishment, made her hobble for many days in a row behind. She kept the fool at a distance and, no matter how much he howled, she never responded, did not stop, as if he, Tashchainar, was not her wolf, as if he did not exist for her, and even if he dared to approach her again to conquer and to please her, Akbara would have seriously measured her strength with him, it was no coincidence that she was the head, and he was the legs in this alien gray pair.

Now Akbara, after she calmed down a little and warmed herself under the wide side of Tashchainar, was grateful to her wolf for sharing her fear, for thereby restoring her self-confidence, and therefore did not resist his zealous caresses, and in response she licked her lips twice, and, overcoming the confusion, which still made itself felt by unexpected trembling, she concentrated in herself, and, listening to how incomprehensibly and restlessly the unborn puppies behaved, she reconciled herself to what is : and with the den, and with the great winter in the mountains, and with the gradually approaching frosty night.

Chingiz Aitmatov, published for the first time in 1986 in the journal Novy Mir. The novel tells about the fates of two people - Avdiy Kallistratov and Boston Urkunchiev, whose fates are connected with the image of the she-wolf Akbara, the binding thread of the book.

Heroes

First and second parts:

Third part:

All three parts:

Akbar And Tashchainar- a pair of wolves.

The plot and structure of the novel

The novel is divided into three parts, the first two of which describe the life of the former seminarian Avdiy Kallistratov, who lost his mother early and was raised by his father, a deacon. Having entered the seminary and faced with the misunderstanding of many priests about the development of the idea of God and the church, he asks himself a question to which he does not find an answer.

Giving an assessment to this act, Ch. Aitmatov writes that thoughts themselves are a form of development, the only way for the existence of such ideas.

Parts one and two

After being expelled from the seminary, Obadiah gets a job at the editorial office of a local newspaper and travels to the Moyunkum desert to write an article to describe the drug trade developed there. Already on the way, he meets his "fellow travelers" - Petrukha and Lyonka. After talking with them for a long time, Avdiy Kallistratov comes to the conclusion that it is not these people who are to blame for breaking the rules, but the system:

And the more he delved into these sad stories, the more he became convinced that all this resembled a kind of undercurrent in the deceptive calmness of the surface of the sea of \u200b\u200blife and that, in addition to private and personal reasons that give rise to a tendency to vice, there are social reasons that allow the possibility of the emergence of this kind diseases of the youth. These reasons at first glance were difficult to grasp - they resembled communicating blood vessels that spread the disease throughout the body. No matter how much you go into these reasons on a personal level, it makes little sense, if not none at all.

Arriving at the field to collect marijuana, Obadiah meets the she-wolf Akbara, whose image is the connecting thread of the entire novel. Despite being able to kill a man, Akbara does not. In the steppe, Avdiy Kallistratov meets with the leader of marijuana pickers named Grishan, a slippery, dodgy type with a wolf grip of a criminal. Having arranged the illusion of a fire on the railway tracks, a gang of marijuana stops a freight train. Having made their way into an empty carriage of a freight train, the next "empty", the messengers-anashists go to the nearest junction station. On the way, Obadiah urges everyone to repent and throw away bags of dried hemp, but drug addicts who have smoked "weed" brutally beat him and throw him out of the car at full speed. Having reached the Zhalpak-Saz station on a ride, Avdiy meets the former "comrades" arrested for transporting cannabis at the transport police department - the whole team, with the exception of Grishan. Anashists do not recognize him, saying to the policeman on duty that they do not know this person. The beaten Avdiy ends up in the station hospital and there he meets a woman whom he had already seen in the steppe - Inga Fedorovna. Obadiah realized that he was madly in love with her. Having been discharged from the hospital, he leaves for his city, but at the invitation of Inga Feodorovna, he soon returns to Moyunkum again. Arriving in Zhalpak-Saz, Avdiy learns that his beloved has left to settle the divorce proceedings with her ex-husband. Ober-Kandalov, a former officer of the disciplinary battalion, dismissed from the army for immoral behavior (homosexual corruption of soldiers), finds him in the waiting room of the station. Recruiting a team to hunt saigas in the Moinuum steppes, he, seeing a lonely young man, persuaded him to take part in the round-up. In order to pass the time spent in a foreign area, Obadiah reluctantly agrees.

Finding himself among a semi-declassed element - people with a very vague past and a very dubious present, Obadiah again makes speeches about repentance - he could not stand the killing of many animals "for the plan" - he tries to prevent the slaughter, and drunken employers crucify him on saxaul. The last words of Obadiah addressed to Akbar will be: “You have come…”

Part Three

The third part describes the life of Boston, living in a difficult period of transition from socialist property to private ownership. The story begins with the local drunkard Bazarbai stealing the cubs of the she-wolf Akbara. He is saved from the wolf chase in the estate of Boston. Despite all the persuasion of Boston, who fears the revenge of the wolves, he sells the wolf cubs for a drink. This story tells about the injustice that prevailed at that time in these places. Boston has a difficult relationship with a local party organizer. The fate of Boston ends tragically - Akbar's she-wolf, yearning for the cubs, takes away Boston's little son, Kenjesh. Boston, shooting at the she-wolf, kills his own son with her. Mad with grief, he goes to the house of the drunkard Bazarbay, shoots him and goes to surrender to the authorities.

Part one

I

Following a short, light, like a child's breath, daytime warming on the mountain slopes facing the sun, the weather soon imperceptibly changed: it began to wind from the glaciers, and the harsh early twilight was already creeping in through the gorges everywhere, carrying the cold grayness of the upcoming snowy night.

There was a lot of snow around. Throughout the Issyk-Kul ridge, the mountains were littered with a snowstorm that swept through these places a couple of days ago, like a fire suddenly blazing at the whim of a masterful element. It's terrible what happened here: mountains disappeared in the blizzard, the sky disappeared, the entire former visible world disappeared. Then everything calmed down, and the weather cleared up. Since then, with the appeasement of a snow storm, the mountains, bound by great drifts, stood in a numb and frozen silence, detached from everything in the world.

At some critical moment, this happened: from a steep rocky slope exposed to the winds, which turned out to be on the flight path, a small scree began to move, trembling from a sonic boom, and immediately stopped, like charmed blood. This push to the unstable ground, however, was enough for several weighty stones, breaking off the steepness, to roll down, scattering more and more, spinning, raising dust and rubble after them, and at the very foot they broke through, like cannonballs, through the bushes of red and barberry, they broke through the snowdrifts, reached the wolves' lair, arranged here by the grays under the overhang of the rock, in a crevice hidden behind the thickets near a small, half-frozen warm stream.

Akbar's she-wolf recoiled from the stones that rolled down from above and the falling snow, and, backing into the darkness of the crevice, shrunk like a spring, raising her scruff and looking ahead of her with wildly burning in the twilight, phosphorescent eyes, ready at any moment for a fight. But her fears were unfounded. It’s scary in the open steppe when there is nowhere to escape from a pursuing helicopter, when, overtaking, it relentlessly chases on its heels, deafening with the whistle of propellers and hitting with automatic bursts, when in the whole world there is no escape from a helicopter, when there is no such gap where one could bury the troubled wolf's head, - after all, the earth will not part to give shelter to the persecuted.

In the mountains it is a different matter - here you can always ride away, there is always where to hide, where to wait out the threat. The helicopter is not scary here, in the mountains the helicopter itself is scary. And yet fear is reckless, all the more familiar, experienced. As the helicopter approached, the she-wolf whined loudly, gathered into a ball, pulled her head in, and yet her nerves could not stand it, broke down, and Akbar howled furiously, seized by powerless, blind fear, and convulsively crawled on her belly to the exit, clanging her teeth angrily and desperately , ready to fight on the spot, as if hoping to put to flight the iron monster rumbling over the gorge, with the appearance of which even stones began to fall from above, as in an earthquake.

And in this mountain silence that reigned at once, like a collapse of cosmic silence, the she-wolf suddenly clearly heard in herself, or rather inside the womb, living tremors. So it was when Akbara, still at the beginning of her hunting life, somehow strangled a large hare from a throw: in the hare, in her stomach, then the same movements of some invisible creatures hidden from the eyes were also felt, and this is a strange circumstance surprised and interested the young curious she-wolf, pointing her ears in surprise, looking incredulously at her strangled prey. And it was so wonderful and incomprehensible that she even tried to start a game with those invisible bodies, just like a cat with a half-dead mouse. And now she herself found in her insides the same living burden - those who, under a favorable set of circumstances, were to be born in a week and a half or two, made themselves known. But so far, the unborn cubs were inseparable from the mother's womb, were part of her being, and therefore they also experienced in the emerging, vague, uterine subconscious the same shock, the same despair that she herself. That was their first remote contact with the outside world, with the hostile reality that awaited them. That is why they moved in the womb, thus responding to maternal suffering. They, too, were afraid, and that fear was transmitted to them by their mother's blood.

Listening to what was going on against her will in her revived womb, Akbara became agitated. The she-wolf's heart began to beat faster, it was filled with courage, determination to protect, to protect from danger those whom she bore in herself. Now she would not hesitate to grab anyone. The great natural instinct for the preservation of offspring spoke in her. And then Akbara felt a hot wave of tenderness flood over her - the need to caress, warm future suckers, give them her milk as if they were already at hand. It was a premonition of happiness. And she closed her eyes, groaned from the bliss, from the expectation of milk in her large, swollen to red, nipples protruding in two rows along her belly, and languidly, slowly, slowly stretched her whole body, as far as the lair allowed, and, finally calming down, again moved closer to her gray-maned Tashchainar. He was powerful, his skin was warm, thick and elastic. And even he, the gloomy Tashchainar, caught what she, the wolf mother, was experiencing, and with some instinct understood what was happening in her womb, and he, too, must have been touched by this. Putting his ear up, Tashchainar raised his angular, heavy head, and in the gloomy gaze of the cold pupils of his deep-set dark eyes, some kind of shadow flashed, some kind of vague pleasant foreboding. And he purred restrainedly, snoring and coughing, expressing his kind disposition and readiness to unquestioningly obey the blue-eyed she-wolf and protect her, and began diligently, affectionately licking Akbara's head, especially her shining blue eyes and nose, with a wide, warm, wet tongue. Akbara loved Tashchainar's tongue even when he flirted and caressed her, trembling with impatience, and his tongue, inflamed from a violent rush of blood, became elastic, fast and energetic, like a snake, although at first she pretended that it was her, at least, indifferently, even when, in moments of calm and prosperity, after a hearty meal, her wolf's tongue was softly moist.

Thus ended that day of a terrible shock for the she-wolf. Subject to the indestructible instinct of maternal nature, she worried not so much for herself, but for those who were soon expected in this lair and for the sake of which she and the wolf sought out and arranged here, in a deep crevice under the overhang of a rock, hidden by all sorts of thickets, a pile of windbreak and rockfall, this is a wolf's nest, so that there is a place to give birth to offspring, so that there is a place to have a haven on earth.

Moreover, Akbara and Tashchainar were newcomers to these parts. To an experienced eye, even outwardly they differed from their local counterparts. The first - the lapels of the fur on the neck, tightly framing the shoulders like a lush silver-gray mantle from the dewlap to the withers, the newcomers had light, characteristic of the steppe wolves. And the growth of akdzhals, that is, gray-maned ones, exceeded the usual wolves of the Issyk-Kul highlands. And if someone saw Akbara up close, he would be struck by her transparent blue eyes - the rarest, and perhaps the only case of its kind. The she-wolf was nicknamed among the local shepherds Akdala, in other words, Belokholka, but soon, according to the laws of language transformation, she turned into Akbars, and then into Akbara - the Great, and meanwhile no one was aware that this was a sign of providence.

A year ago, there were no gray-manes here at all. Having appeared once, however, they continued to keep apart. At first, the aliens wandered in order to avoid clashes with the owners, mostly in the neutral zones of the local wolf possessions, interrupted as best they could, in search of prey they even ran into the fields, downstream, inhabited by people, but they never stuck to the local flocks - the blue-eyed she-wolf had a too independent character Akbar, to adjoin strangers and remain in subjection.

The judge of everything is time. Over time, the gray-maned newcomers were able to stand up for themselves, in numerous fierce battles they seized lands for themselves on the Issyk-Kul highlands, and now they, the newcomers, were the masters, and already the local wolves did not dare to invade their borders. So, it can be said that the life of the newly-appeared gray-maned wolves was successfully developing in Issyk-Kul, but all this was preceded by its own history, and if the animals could remember the past, then Akbara, who was distinguished by great understanding and subtlety of perception, would have to re-experience all that, about which, perhaps, she sometimes remembered to the point of tears and heavy groans.

In that lost world, in the Moyunkum savanna, far from here, a great hunting life flowed in an endless pursuit across the endless Moyunkum open spaces for endless saiga herds. When the saiga antelopes, who lived from time immemorial in the savanna steppes, overgrown with eternally dry saxaul, are the oldest, as time itself, of artiodactyls, when these hook-nosed herd animals tireless in running with wide nostrils-pipes that pass air through the lungs with the same energy, like whales through the ocean streams, and therefore endowed with the ability to run without respite from sunrise to sunset - so, when they set in motion, pursued by eternal and inseparable wolves with them, when one frightened herd carried the neighboring herd in panic, and then and the other and the third, and when large and small oncoming herds were included in this total flight, when the saigas raced along the Moyunkums - along the hills, along the plains, along the sands, like a flood that had fallen on the ground - the earth ran back and hummed underfoot as it hums she was under a hailstorm in the summer, and the air was filled with a swirling spirit of movement, siliceous dust and sparks flying from under the hooves, the smell of herd sweat, the smell of a crazy competition not for life, but for death, and the wolves, plaiting on the run, followed and beside, trying to direct the herds of saigas to their wolf ambushes, where seasoned carvers waited for them among the saxaul, that is, animals that rushed from ambush to the scruff of the neck a rapidly running victim and, rolling head over heels with her, managed to bite her throat, bleed and again rush into the chase; but the saigas somehow often recognized where the wolf ambushes were waiting for them, and managed to rush past, and the round-up from a new circle resumed with even greater fury and speed, and all of them, pursued and pursued - one link in a cruel existence - laid out on the run , as in death agony, burning his blood in order to live and to survive, and perhaps only God himself could stop both, the persecuted and the persecutors, for it was about the life and death of creatures thirsting for health, for those wolves that did not endured such a frantic pace, those that were not born to compete in the struggle for existence - in the run-fight - those wolves fell off their feet and were left to die in the dust raised by the chase receding like a storm, and if they survived, they went away to other lands, where they hunted by robbery in harmless sheep flocks, which did not even try to flee, however, there was their own danger, the most terrible of all possible dangers - there, with the herds, there were people, gods of sheep and they were sheep cat's slaves, those who themselves live, but do not allow others to survive, especially those who do not depend on them, but are free to be free ...

People, people - man-gods! People also hunted the saigas of the Moyunkum savannah. Before they appeared on horseback, dressed in skins, armed with arrows, then they appeared with booming guns, whooping, galloping back and forth, and the saiga rushed in a crowd in one direction and the other - go look for them in the saxaul tracts, but the time has come, and the human gods they began to round up cars, starving them to death, just like wolves, and brought down the saigas, shooting them on the move, and then the man-gods began to fly in helicopters and, having first spotted the saiga herds in the steppe from the air, went to surround the animals in at the specified coordinates, while ground snipers raced across the plains at a speed of up to a hundred or more kilometers so that the saigas did not have time to hide, and helicopters corrected the target and movement from above. Cars, helicopters, rapid-fire rifles - and life in the Moyunkum savanna turned upside down ...

Akbar's blue-eyed she-wolf was still half-bright, and her future wolf-husband Tashchainar was a little older than her when the time came for them to get used to the big roundups. At first, they did not keep up with the chase, tormented the fallen antelopes, killed the unfinished, and over time, they surpassed in strength and endurance many experienced wolves, and especially the aging ones. And if everything went as nature should, they would soon be the leaders of the packs. But things turned out differently...

It doesn’t happen year after year, and in the spring of that year, the saiga herds had a particularly rich offspring: many queens brought twins, because last autumn, during the rut, the dry herbage turned green once or twice after several heavy rains in warm weather. There was a lot of food - hence the birth rate. At the time of lambing, the saigas went in early spring to the large snowless sands, which is in the very depths of the Moyunkums - it is not easy for wolves to get there, and chasing saigas along the dunes is a hopeless business. There is no way to catch up with antelopes on the sands. But the wolf packs more than received theirs in the fall and in winter time, when seasonal nomadic animals threw out countless saiga livestock to semi-desert and steppe expanses. That's when God himself ordered the wolves to get their share. And in the summer, especially in the great heat, the wolves preferred not to touch the saigas, since there was enough other, more accessible prey: marmots in large numbers scurried across the steppe, catching up on hibernation, they had to do everything that other animals managed to do during the summer and animals for a year of life. So the marmot tribe fussed around, despising the danger. Why not fishing - because everything has its time, and in winter you can’t get marmots - they don’t exist. And also various animals and birds, especially partridges, went to feed the wolves in the summer months, but the main prey - the great hunt for saigas - fell in the fall and stretched from autumn until the very end of winter. Again, everything has its time. And that had its own, naturally given expediency of turning life in the savannah. Only natural disasters and man could disturb this initial course of things in Moyunkum...

II

By dawn, the air over the savanna cooled somewhat, and only then did it feel better - the breathing of living creatures became freer, and the hour of the most gratifying time came between the dawning day, burdened by the coming heat, mercilessly baking the salt marsh steppe white, and the leaving stuffy, hot night. By that time, the moon had blazed over the Moyunkums in an absolutely round yellow ball, illuminating the earth with a steady bluish light. And there was no end or beginning of this land in sight. Everywhere dark, hardly discernible distances merged with the starry sky. The silence was alive, for everything that inhabited the savanna, everything except snakes, was in a hurry to enjoy the coolness at that hour, was in a hurry to live. Early birds squeaked and moved in the tamarisk bushes, busily scurrying about hedgehogs, cicadas that sang without ceasing all night, purred with renewed vigor; the awakened marmots were already protruding from their holes and looking around, not yet starting to collect food - crumbled saxaul seeds. The whole family flew from place to place with a large flat-headed gray owl and five flat-headed owls, grown up, fledged and already trying to wing, flew as they had to, now and then carefully calling to each other and not losing sight of each other. They were echoed by various creatures and various animals of the predawn savannah ...

And it was summer, the first joint summer of the blue-eyed Akbara and Tashchainar, who had already shown themselves to be tireless saiga beaters in the rounds and were already among the strongest couples among the Moyunkum wolves. Fortunately for them - it must be assumed that in the world of animals there can also be happy and unhappy - both of them, and Akbara and Tashchainar, were endowed by nature with qualities that are especially vital for steppe predators in the semi-desert savannah: an instant reaction, a sense of foresight on the hunt, a kind of "strategic" ingenuity, and, of course, remarkable physical strength, speed and onslaught in the run. Everything spoke for the fact that this couple had a great hunting future and their life would be full of the hardships of everyday food and the beauty of their animal destiny. So far, nothing prevented them from ruling undividedly in the Moyunkum steppes, since the invasion of man into these limits was still of an accidental nature and they had never yet encountered a man face to face. This will happen a little later. And one more benefit, if not to say a privilege, from the creation of the world was that they, animals, like the whole animal world, could live from day to day, not knowing fear and worries about tomorrow. In everything, expedient nature freed animals from this accursed burden of being. Although it was precisely in this mercy that the tragedy that lay in wait for the inhabitants of the Moyunkums lurked. But none of them could suspect it. No one could imagine that the seemingly endless Moyunkum savanna, no matter how vast and how great it is, is just a small island in the Asian subcontinent, a place the size of a thumbnail, painted over on geographical map yellow-brown color, which from year to year is increasingly being pressed by steadily plowed virgin lands, innumerable domestic herds are pressing, wandering along the steppe after artesian wells in search of new areas of food, canals and roads are being laid in the border zones in connection with the direct proximity to the savannah of one of the largest gas pipelines; more and more insistently, for a long time, more and more technically armed people on wheels and motors, with radio communications, with water reserves invade the depths of any deserts and semi-deserts, including the Moyunkums, but it is not scientists who make selfless discoveries that descendants should be proud of, but ordinary people doing an ordinary thing, a thing that is accessible and feasible to almost anyone and everyone. And even more so, the inhabitants of the unique Moyunkum savanna were not given to know that in the most ordinary things for mankind lies the source of good and evil on earth. And that everything here depends on the people themselves - what they will direct these most ordinary things for humanity: for good or bad, for creation or destruction. And the four-legged and other creatures of the Moyunkum savanna were completely unaware of the difficulties that plagued the people themselves, who tried to know themselves since people became thinking beings, although they still did not solve the eternal riddle: why evil almost always triumphs over good ...

All these human affairs, according to the logic of things, could in no way concern the Moyunkum animals, for they lay outside their nature, outside their instincts and experience. And, in general, so far, nothing has seriously violated the established way of life of this great Asian steppe, spread over hot semi-desert plains and hills, overgrown only here with species of drought-resistant tamarisk growing only here, a kind of half-grass, half-tree, stone-strong, twisted, like a sea rope, sandy saxaul, hard grass and, most of all, reed lancet chiy, this beauty of semi-deserts, and in the light of the moon, and in the light of the sun, flickering like a golden ghostly forest, in which, as in shallow water, someone is at least as tall as dog - neither raised his head, he would see everything around and be seen himself.

It was in these parts that the fate of a new wolf couple, Akbara and Tashchainar, was formed, and by that time - what is most important in the life of animals - they already had their first-born tunguchs, three puppies from the litter, produced by Akbara that memorable spring in Moyunkum, in that memorable den they chose in the pit under the washed-out butt of an old saxaul, near a half-dried tamarisk grove, where it was convenient to take wolf cubs for training. The wolf cubs were already holding their ears upright, each finding their own temper, although when playing with each other, their ears protruded like a puppy again, and they felt quite strong on their feet. And more and more often they linked up behind their parents in small and large sorties.

Recently, one of these sorties with an absence from the lair for a whole day and night almost ended in an unexpected disaster for the wolves.

That early morning, Akbara led her brood to the far outskirts of the Moyunkum savanna, where in the steppe expanses, especially along deaf padyas and gullies, stem grasses grew with a viscous, unlike anything, bewitching smell. If you wander for a long time among that high grass stand, inhaling pollen, then at first there comes a feeling of unusual lightness in movements, a feeling of pleasant gliding above the ground, and then there is lethargy in the legs and drowsiness. Akbara remembered these places since childhood and visited here once a year at the time of the flowering of Datura grass. Hunting small steppe animals along the way, she liked to get a little drunk in the big grasses, wallow in the hot infusion of the herbal spirit, feel the soaring while running and then fall asleep.

This time she and Tashchainar were no longer alone: they were followed by wolf cubs - three awkwardly long-legged puppies. The youngsters had to learn as much as possible in the campaigns of the surroundings, to master the future wolf possessions from childhood. The fragrant meadows, where the she-wolf led to familiarization, were on the edge of those possessions, a strange world stretched further, people could meet there, from there, from that boundless side, sometimes they heard howling howling, how autumn winds, locomotive whistles, it was a world hostile to wolves. There, on this edge of the savannah, they went, led by Akbara.

Tashchaynar was cowardly behind Akbara, and the wolf cubs rushed briskly from an excess of energy and strove to jump forward, but the mother wolf did not let them be self-willed - she strictly watched so that no one dared to step on the path ahead of her.

The places were sandy at first - in thickets of saxaul and desert wormwood, the sun rose higher and higher, promising, as always, clear, hot weather. By evening, the wolf family arrived at the edge of the savannah. Arrived just in time - before dark. The grasses this year were tall - almost up to the withers of adult wolves. Having warmed up during the day in the hot sun, nondescript inflorescences on shaggy stems exuded a strong smell, especially in places of continuous thickets this spirit was thick. Here, in a small ravine, the wolves made a halt after a long journey. The restless wolf cubs did not rest so much as ran around, sniffing and looking at everything that attracted their curiosity. Perhaps the wolf family would have stayed here all night, since the animals were full and drunk - along the way they managed to grab a few fat marmots and hares and destroy many nests, they quenched their thirst in a spring at the bottom of a passing ravine - but one emergency forced them urgently leave this place and turn back home, to the lair in the depths of the savannah. They left all night.

And it happened that already at sunset, when Akbara and Tashchainar, tipsy from the smells of dope grass, stretched out in the shade of the bushes, a human voice suddenly sounded nearby. Before the man was seen by wolf cubs playing at the top of the gully. The animals did not suspect and could not assume that the creature that suddenly appeared here was a man. A certain subject almost naked - in the same swimming trunks and sneakers on his bare feet, in the once white, but already fairly filthy panama on his head - ran through the same grasses. He ran strangely - he chose dense growths and stubbornly ran back and forth between the stems, as if it gave him pleasure. The cubs hid at first, perplexed and afraid - they had never seen anything like this. And the man kept running and running through the grass like crazy. The cubs grew bolder, curiosity got the better of them, they wanted to start a game with this strange, running like clockwork, unprecedented, naked-skinned two-legged beast. And then the man himself noticed the wolf cubs. And what is most surprising - instead of being alert, thinking about why the wolves suddenly appeared here - this eccentric went to the cubs, affectionately stretching out his hands.

– Look, what is it? he said, breathing heavily and wiping sweat off his face. - No wolves? Or did it seem to me from whirling? No, three, but so handsome, but so big already! Oh my little animals! Where are you from and where? What are you doing here? Somehow I was not easily brought, and what are you doing here, in these steppes, among this accursed grass? Come, come to me, do not be afraid! Oh, you stupid little animals!

The foolish wolf cubs really succumbed to his caresses. Wagging their tails, playfully clinging to the ground, they crawled towards the man, hoping to start racing with him, but then Akbara jumped out of the ravine. The she-wolf instantly assessed the danger of the situation. With a muffled growl, she rushed to the naked man, rosy lit by the sunset rays of the steppe sun. It didn't cost her anything to slash his fangs across his throat or stomach with a flourish. And the man, completely stunned at the sight of a furiously running she-wolf, sat down, clutching his head in fear. This is what saved him. Already on the run, Akbara for some reason changed her intention. She jumped over a man, naked and defenseless, who could be hit with a single blow, jumped, while managing to make out the features of his face and eyes that stopped in terrible fear, smelling the smell of his body, jumped, turned around and jumped again a second time in a different direction , rushed to the wolf cubs, drove them away, painfully biting on their necks and pushing them to the ravine, and then she ran into Tashchainar, who raised his neck terribly at the sight of a man, bit and turned him too, and all of them, rolling down into the ravine in a crowd, disappeared in the blink of an eye …

And just then that naked and ridiculous type caught himself, rushed to run ... And for a long time he ran across the steppe, without looking back and without taking a breath ...

That was the first accidental meeting of Akbara and her family with a man... But who could know what this meeting foreshadowed...

The day was drawing to a close, emanating merciless heat from the setting sun, from the earth heated during the day. The sun and the steppe are eternal values: the steppe is measured by the sun, how big it is, the space illuminated by the sun. And the sky above the steppe is measured by the height of a flying kite. At that pre-sunset hour, a whole flock of white-tailed kites circled high above the Moyunkum savannah. They flew aimlessly, swam selflessly and smoothly, flying for the sake of flying in that always cool, misty, cloudless height. They flew one after another in one direction in a circle, as if symbolizing the eternity and inviolability of this earth and this sky. The kites did not make any sounds, but silently watched what was happening at that moment below, under their wings. Thanks to their exceptional all-seeing vision, it was thanks to their eyesight (their hearing is in second place) that these aristocratic predators were celestial inhabitants of the savannah, descending to the sinful earth only for food and for the night.

It must have been at that hour from that exorbitant height that they could clearly see a wolf, a she-wolf and three wolf cubs, located on a small hillock among the scattered bushes of tamarisk and golden growth of chia. Together, sticking out their tongues from the heat, the wolf family rested on that hillock, not at all assuming that they were the object of observation of celestial birds. Tashchainar was reclining in his favorite position - crossing his paws in front, raising his head, he stood out among everyone with a powerful scruff of the neck and thick, heavy build. Nearby, tucking up her thick, bobtailed tail, somewhat resembling a frozen sculpture, sat Akbar's young she-wolf. The she-wolf firmly rested in front of her with straight tendon legs. Her whitening chest and sunken belly with two rows of nipples sticking out, but already having lost their swelling, emphasized the leanness and strength of the she-wolf's thighs. And the cubs, the triplets, were spinning around. Their restlessness, pestering and playfulness did not annoy their parents at all. And the wolf and she-wolf looked at them with obvious connivance: let them, they say, frolic for themselves ...

Unfortunately, for the fight against social vices and the pursuit of justice, many people have to pay dearly. And sometimes the understanding comes that the laws of the animal world are much fairer, but a person intervenes there too, violating the natural order of things. When you read Chingiz Torekulovich Aitmatov's novel "The Block", you understand how deeply and widely he covers these topics. You can talk about it for a very long time and constantly find something new. It prompts reflection, causes a feeling of heaviness in the chest, but still somewhere there is a drop of hope that helps to move forward.

The book begins and ends with a story about the plight of a family of wolves. The wolf and she-wolf became parents, and when winter came, the wolf couple went hunting along with the grown cubs. They wanted to train them to hunt and survive. But it turned out that the saigas were hunted not only by wolves, but also by people who killed everyone indiscriminately. On that day, the life of little wolf cubs was cut short. And in one of the hunters' cars lay a bound man named Obadiah.

Obadiah's life was not easy, he was left without a mother early, and then without a father. He worked for a newspaper and had nowhere to live. Then Obadiah decided to go on a business trip to learn more about the drug trade and, if possible, set the lost souls on the right path. Only his truth and talk about saving the soul was not needed by anyone ...

When you read a book, you can see the regret of the author. The image of Obadiah is similar to the image of Jesus, and he chose the same path without betraying his ideas. The parallel description of the life of animals and people suggests that the human world is more cruel. Animals kill only to feed, unlike people who kill for fun and profit.

On our website you can download the book "The Block" by Aitmatov Chingiz Torekulovich for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.

That summer, in the Moyunkumsky reserve, wolf cubs were born for the first time to the she-wolf Akbara and the wolf Tashchainar. With the first snow, it was time to hunt, but how could the wolves know that their original prey - saigas - would be needed to replenish the meat-delivery plan, and that someone would offer to use the "meat resources" of the reserve for this.

When the wolf pack surrounded the saigas, helicopters suddenly appeared. Circling in the air, they drove the frightened herd towards the main force - the hunters in the "UAZ". The wolves also ran. At the end of the chase, only Akbara and Tashchainar survived among the wolves (two of their cubs died under the hooves of a crazy mass, the third was shot by one of the hunters). They, tired and wounded, wanted to get to their native lair as soon as possible, but there were also people near it who collected saiga corpses - the meat-delivery plan gave these homeless people a chance to earn extra money.

The senior in the company was Ober, in the past the foreman of the disciplinary battalion, immediately after him - Mishka-Shabashnik, a type of "bull ferocity", and the lowest position was occupied by the former artist of the regional theater Hamlet-Galkin and the "aboriginal" Uzyukbay. In their military all-terrain vehicle among the cold carcasses of saigas lay Avdiy Kallistratov, the son of the late deacon, expelled from the seminary for heresy.

At that time, he worked as a freelancer for the regional Komsomol newspaper: readers liked articles with his unusual reasoning, and the newspaper willingly printed them. Over time, Obadiah hoped to express on the pages of the newspaper his “new-thinking ideas about God and man in the modern era, as opposed to the dogmatic postulates of the archaic dogma,” but he did not understand that not only church postulates that had not changed for centuries, but also the powerful logic of scientific atheism were against him. However, "it burned its own fire."

Obadiah had a pale, high forehead. Bulging gray eyes reflected restlessness of spirit and thought, and shoulder-length hair and a chestnut beard gave a benevolent expression to his face. Obadiah's mother died in early childhood, and his father, who put his whole soul into raising his son, soon after he entered the religious school. "And perhaps that was the mercy of fate, for he would not have suffered the heretical metamorphosis that happened to his son." After the death of his father, Obadiah was expelled from the small service apartment in which he lived all his life.

It was then that he made his first trip to Central Asia: the newspaper gave the task to trace the ways of penetration of the marijuana drug into the youth environment of the European regions of the country. To complete the task, Obadiah joined the company of "messengers for marijuana". The messengers went for marijuana to the Primoyunkum steppes in May, when hemp blooms. Their groups were formed at the Kazansky railway station in Moscow, where messengers came from all over Soviet Union, especially from port cities, where it was easier to sell the drug. Here Obadiah learned the first rule of the messengers: communicate less in public, so that in case of failure they would not betray each other. Usually the messengers collected cannabis inflorescences, but the most valuable raw material was "plasticine" - a mass of hemp pollen, which was processed into heroin.

A few hours later, Obadiah was already driving south. He guessed that at least a dozen messengers were on this train, but he knew only two, whom he joined at the station. Both messengers arrived from Murmansk. The most experienced of them, Petrukha, was twenty years old, the second, sixteen-year-old Lenya, went fishing for the second time, and already considered himself an experienced messenger.

The more Obadiah delved into the details of this fishery, the more he became convinced that "in addition to private and personal reasons that give rise to a tendency to vice, there are social reasons that allow the possibility of this kind of youth illness." Obadiah dreamed of writing "a whole sociological treatise" about this, or, best of all, to open a discussion - in print and on television. Because of their detachment from real life he did not understand that “no one is interested in talking about such things openly, and this was always explained by considerations of the supposed prestige of our society,” although in reality everyone was simply afraid to risk their official position. Obadiah was free from this fear and longed to help these people "with personal participation and personal example to prove to them that the way out of this pernicious state is possible only through one's own rebirth."

On the fourth day of their journey, the Snowy Mountains appeared on the horizon - a sign that their journey was almost over. The messengers had to get off at the Zhalpak-Saz station, hitchhike to the Moyunkumsky state farm, and then go on foot. The entire operation was invisibly directed by Himself, whom Obadiah never saw, but realized that this mysterious man was very distrustful and cruel. Having had a bite to eat at the station, Avdiy, Petruha and Lyonka went on under the guise of seasonal workers.

In the remote Kazakh village of Uchkuduk, where they stopped to rest and earn some money, Avdiy met a girl who soon became the main person in his life. She drove her motorcycle up to the building they were plastering. Obadiah especially remembered the combination of blond hair and dark eyes, which gave the girl a special charm. This visit of the motorcyclist alerted the messengers, and the next morning they moved on.

Soon they came across very dense thickets of hemp. Each novice messenger had to present Himself with a gift - a matchbox of "plasticine". “The case turned out to be simple, but exhausting to the limit and barbaric in its way. It was necessary, having stripped naked, to run through the thickets, so that pollen from the inflorescences would stick to the body. Then a layer of pollen was scraped off the body in the form of a homogeneous mass. Obadiah was forced to do this only by the prospect of meeting Himself.

Soon they set off on the return journey with backpacks stuffed to overflowing with marijuana. Now the messengers faced the most difficult task: to get to Moscow, bypassing the police round-ups at the Asian stations. Again, the mysterious Himself was in charge of the whole operation, and all the way Obadiah prepared himself for a meeting with him. At the railroad, where the messengers were supposed to board the freight wagon, they met Grishan with two messengers. When Obadiah saw him, he immediately realized that this was Himself.

Part two

Grishan had an ordinary appearance and resembled "a predatory animal driven into a corner, which wants to rush, bite, but does not dare and still takes courage and assumes a threatening pose." He joined the group of Obadiah under the guise of a simple messenger. After talking with Obadiah, Grishan quickly realized that he belongs to the breed of "obsessed idiots" and went to Moyunkum only in order to correct what cannot be corrected by one person. Obadiah and Grishan had absolutely opposite positions in life, from which none of them was going to retreat. Grishan wanted Obadiah to leave and not disturb the messengers with his reasoning about God, but Obadiah could not leave.

In the evening it was time to board the freight train. Grishan sent two people to create an "illusion of fire" on the tracks. Noticing the fire laid out on the rails, the driver slowed down, and the whole company managed to jump into an empty car. The train moved towards Zhalpak-Saz. Soon everyone relaxed and passed around a circle of cigarettes with weed. Only Avdiy and Grishan did not smoke. Obadiah realized that Grishan allowed them to "get high" to spite him. Although Obadiah pretended that he did not care, in his heart he "was indignant, suffered from his impotence to oppose anything to Grishan."

It all started with the fact that Petruha, who was completely stunned, began to pester Obadiah with a proposal to take a puff from a greasy bull. Unable to stand it, Obadiah grabbed the steer and threw it out the open door of the car, then began shaking the cannabis out of the backpack into the same place, urging everyone to follow his example. The messengers pounced on Obadiah, "he is now personally convinced of the ferocity, cruelty, sadism of drug addicts." One Lyonka tried to separate the fighting. Grishan looked at it, not hiding his gloating. Obadiah understood that Grishan would help him, one had only to ask, but Obadiah could not ask Grishan for help. In the end, beaten to a pulp, Obadiah was thrown out of a moving train at full speed.

Obadiah was lying in a ditch near the railway, and he saw that memorable conversation between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, in which the future Messiah also did not ask for mercy.

Obadiah came to himself at night, under the pouring rain. Water filled the cuvette, and this made Obadiah move. His head remained clear, and he was surprised at "what amazing clarity and volume of thoughts overshadow him." Now it seemed to Obadiah that he existed in two different eras: in the present he was trying to save his dying body, and in the past he wanted to save the Teacher, rushing through the hot streets of Jerusalem and realizing that all his attempts were in vain.

Obadiah waited out the night under the railway bridge. In the morning, he discovered that his passport had turned into a lump of wet paper, “and of the money, only two banknotes were more or less preserved - twenty-five rubles and a dozen”, for which he had to get to his native Prioksk. There was a country road under the bridge. Avdiy was lucky - almost immediately a ride picked him up and took him to the Zhalpak-Saz station.

Obadiah looked so skinned and suspicious that he was immediately arrested at the station. At the police station where he was brought, Obadiy was surprised to see almost the entire team of messengers with the exception of Grishan. Obadiah called out to them, but they pretended not to recognize him. The policeman already wanted to release Obadiah, but he demanded that he, too, be put behind bars, saying that they would repent of their sins and thereby be cleansed. Mistaking Avdiy for a madman, the policeman took him to the waiting room, asked him to leave as far as possible and left. The people who beat Obadiah were supposed to make him want to take revenge, but instead it seemed to him that "the defeat of marijuana miners is also his defeat, the defeat of an altruistic idea that carries good."

Meanwhile, Obadiah was getting worse. He felt that he was completely ill. Some elderly woman noticed this, called an ambulance and Avdiy ended up in the Zhalpak-Saz station hospital. On the third day, the same motorcyclist girl who came to Uchkuduk came to him. The girl, Inga Feodorovna, was a friend of the station doctor, from whom she learned about Avdia. Inga was engaged in the study of Moyunkum hemp, the story of Obadiah was very interested in her, and she came to find out if he needed scientific information about marijuana. This meeting was the beginning of a "new era" for Obadiah.

Arriving in the fall to Inge, Avdiy did not find her at home. In the letter that Inga left him in the post office, it was said that her ex-husband wants to take away her son from her through the court, and she had to urgently leave. Avdiy returned to the station, where he was met by Kandalov, nicknamed Ober. On the morning of the next day, Avdiy, together with the "junta", went to raid the Moyunkum Reserve.

The extermination of the saigas had a terrible effect on Obadiah, and, just as then, in the carriage, he began to “demand that this slaughter be stopped immediately, called on the brutal hunters to repent, turn to God.” This "was the reason for the massacre." Ober arranged a trial, as a result of being beaten to a pulp, Obadiah was crucified on a clumsy saxaul. Then they got into the car and left.

And Obadiah saw a huge water surface, and above the water - the figure of the deacon Kallistratov, and Obadiah heard his own childish voice, reading a prayer. “Then came the final waters of life.” And the executioners of Obadiah were fast asleep one and a half kilometers from the place of execution - they drove off to leave Obadiah alone. At dawn, Akbara and Tashchainar crept up to their devastated lair and saw a man hanging from a saxaul. Still alive, the man raised his head and whispered to the she-wolf: "You have come...". These were his last words. At this time, the sound of an engine was heard - it was the executioners returning - and the wolves left the Moyunkum savannah forever.

For a whole year, Akbara and Tashchainar lived in the Aldash reeds, where they had five wolf cubs. But soon they began to build a road to the mining development here, and the ancient reeds were set on fire. And again the wolf cubs died, and again Akbara and Tashchainar had to leave. They made their last attempt to continue the race in the Issyk-Kul basin, and this attempt ended in a terrible tragedy.

Part Three

On that day, the shepherd Bazarbai Noigutov was hired as a guide to geologists. After escorting the geologists and receiving 25 rubles and a bottle of vodka, Bazarbai went straight home. On the way, he could not stand it, dismounted by the stream, took out the coveted bottle and suddenly heard a strange cry. Bazarbai looked around and found in the thickets a wolf's lair with very small wolf cubs. It was the lair of Akbara and Tashchainar, who were hunting that day. Without hesitation, Bazarbai put all four cubs into saddlebags and hurried away in order to have time to go as far as possible before the arrival of the wolves. Bazarbai was going to sell these wolf cubs at a very high price.

Returning from the hunt and finding no children in the lair, Akbara and Tashchainar followed the trail of Bazarbai. Having caught up with the shepherd, the wolves tried to cut off his path to the lakeside and drive him into the mountains. But Bazarbai was lucky - Boston's sheep Urkunchiev was on his way. Bazarbai hated this collective-farm leader and envied him in black, but now there was no choice.

The owner was not at home, and Boston's wife, Gulyumkan, received Bazarbai as a dear guest. Bazarbai immediately demanded vodka, collapsed on the carpet, and began to talk about his today's "feat". The cubs were taken out of the bags, and the one and a half year old son of Boston began to play with them. Soon Bazarbai took the cubs and left, while Akbara and Tashchainar remained near the Boston Compound.

Since then, near the economy of Boston every night, a dreary wolf howl was heard. The next day, Boston went to Bazarbai to buy wolf cubs from him. Bazarbay met him unfriendly. He did not like everything in Boston: he had a good coat, and a good horse, and he himself was healthy and bright-eyed, and his wife was beautiful. In vain did Boston convince Bazarbay that the cubs should be returned to the lair. He did not sell the wolf cubs, he had a fight with Boston.

On that day, the wolves left their lair forever and began to roam the area, fearing no one. “And they started talking about them even more when Akbara and Tashchainar broke the wolf taboo and started attacking people.” About Akbar and Tashchainar "terrible glory went", but no one knew the real reason for the wolf's revenge, and did not suspect "the hopeless longing of the mother wolf for the wolf cubs stolen from the lair." And Bazarbai at that time, having sold the wolf cubs, drank away the money and everywhere boasted about how great he had sent Boston, "this unrevealed secret fist."

And the wolves returned to the Boston courtyard again. The howl of the wolf kept him awake. I involuntarily remembered a difficult childhood. Boston's father died in the war when he was in the second grade, then his mother died, and he, the youngest in the family, was left to his own devices. He achieved everything in his life with hard work, therefore he believed that the truth was on his side, and did not pay attention to the blasphemy. Only in one of his deeds he repented so far.

Gulyumkan was the second wife of Boston. He worked and was friends with her late husband Ernazar. At that time, Boston sought to ensure that the land on which his flocks grazed was assigned to his brigade for permanent use. No one agreed to this - everything looked very much like private property. The state farm party organizer Kochkorbaev was especially against it. And then Boston and Ernazar had an idea: to overtake the cattle for the whole summer over the Ala-Mongyu pass, to the rich Kichibel pasture. They decided to go to the pass and chart a path for the flocks. The higher they climbed into the mountains, the thicker the snow cover became. Because of the snow, Ernazar did not notice a crack in the glacier and fell into it. The crack was so deep that the rope did not reach the bottom of it. Boston could do nothing to save his friend, and then he hurried for help. He put all the harness on the ropes, so he had to go on foot, but here he was lucky - one of the shepherds was playing a wedding in the foothills. Boston led people to the crack, then the climbers arrived and said that they could not get Ernazar's corpse out of the crack - he was firmly frozen into the thickness of the ice. And to this day, Boston has a dream about how he descends into a crack to say goodbye to a friend.

Six months later, Boston's first wife died. Before her death, she asked her husband not to walk in bobs, but to marry Gulyumkan, who was her friend and distant relative. Boston did so, and soon their son Kenjesh was born. The children of Boston and Gulyumkan from their first marriages have already grown up and started families, so this child has become a joy for both mother and father.

Now the wolves howled outside the Boston home every night. Finally, Boston could not stand it and decided to watch for a pair of wolves near the flock. They would have to be killed - there was no other way out. It was not easy for Boston: the charge of protecting wolves was added to the charge of Ernazar's death. Two of his enemies - Kokchorbaev and Bazarbai - united, and now they were persecuting him, driving him into a dead end. Only Tashchainar managed to kill Boston, Akbara managed to escape.

The world for Akbara has lost its value. At night, she came to Boston's house and silently sniffed, hoping that the wind would carry the smell of wolf cubs to her. Summer came, Boston overtook the cattle for summer grazing and returned for the family. Before leaving, they drank tea, and Kenjesh played in the yard. No one noticed how Akbara crept up and carried away the child. Boston grabbed a gun and started shooting at the she-wolf, but missed all the time - he was afraid to hit his son, whom Akbara carried on her back. And the she-wolf, meanwhile, went further and further. Then Boston aimed more carefully and fired. When he ran up to the fallen Akbara, she was still breathing, and Kenjesh was already dead.

Beside himself with grief, Boston loaded his gun, went to Bazarbay and shot him at point-blank range, avenging everything. Then he turned and went “to the side of the lake to surrender to the authorities there. That was the end of his life."