Finally Chagatayev managed to get to his feet for a moment. He stretched out his arms, ready to grab the first bird which fell on him and to strangle it in his hands. The eagles were in the air, picking up momentum to dive on him. His foot stepped on his revolver, and he leaned down to pick it up, but couldn’t lift it. The birds dove onto his back, but by now his head had cleared and he was able to figure, from the number of new beak wounds he got, that there were three eagles. Chagatayev, when he had picked up his revolver, threw himself backwards trying to shake off or to knock down the bird fastened to his back, but he threw his weight badly, and fell down awkwardly on his side, and the eagles flew off to one side. Chagatayev tried to raise himself for a better aim and all the exhausted bones in his body scraped against each other, just like the bones of the people in his tribe. He heard it, and he felt sorry for his body and its bones—once upon a time his mother had put them together out of the poverty of her own flesh, not from love or passion, not from delight or enjoyment, but from the most everyday kind of necessity. He felt himself to be some alien property, like the last possession of poor people which they want to squander to no good purpose, and this feeling drove him to a terrible fury. Chagatayev sat down firmly on the sand. The eagles, without even rising to any great height, rushed down on him again at great speed, their wings held tightly to their bodies. He let them come close, and then he pulled the trigger. Chagatayev could see the eagles clearly this time, there were three of them, and now he was firing accurately, coldbloodedly, saving himself as if he were another person, a close friend who needed help. He fired five bullets almost point-blank at the birds rushing down at him. With a whistling of air the birds flew low over him, unable to check their momentum because they were either dead or fatally wounded. They fell some meters beyond Chagatayev on the dark night sand.
Chagatayev was shuddering with anxiety and exhaustion. He dug a little trench in the sand and lay down in it, squeezing his body in to get warm and to go to sleep, without worrying about how much blood would flow out of his wounds while he slept, not even thinking about them or whether he would live.
Aidim walked a long way that night, and then she grew tired, lay down, and fell asleep, without having heard Chagatayev’s shots. But remembering that she must not sleep long, she soon woke up and anxiously walked on farther. A poor, late-rising moon came up out of the earth a great distance away, and threw its low light across the sand. Aidim looked around her with searching eyes. She knew it was impossible that nothing should exist on the earth around her. If one walks across the desert for a whole day, one will inevitably meet or find something; either water, or sheep, or one will see a lot of birds, somebody’s lost donkey will turn up or various animals will run by. Older people had told her that there are just as many good things in the desert as in any country, no matter where, but there are few people, and this is why it seems as if nothing else exists. And Aidim didn’t even know that there was any land richer or better than the desert sand or the reed thickets in the flood waters of the Amu-Darya River.
Aidim stood on the highest sand dune; the twinkling, glimmering moonlight drew her in one direction—everywhere else the light moved easily but in this one place something was blocking it. She walked to where the light was darker and soon she could make out a little baby lamb. The lamb was scratching with its legs on the very top of a small sand hill and throwing up the sand in such a way that from a distance, seen through the darkness and across the spectral hilly desert, it looked like something important and mysterious going on.
The lamb was probably digging up blades of grass which had been buried in the spring, and eating them. Aidim quietly climbed up the dune and grabbed the lamb. It did not struggle, for it knew nothing about men. Aidim threw it down and wanted to bite through its weak little throat, to drink its blood and then to eat it. But then she noticed, right under the hill, a lot of sheep breathing heavily like people and digging with their front feet into the sand, trying to get at wetness hidden somewhere beneath them. Aidim let the lamb go and ran down from the dune to the flock of sheep. Before she got to them, a ram jumped up and stood stock-still in front of her, its head lowered for a fight. Aidim sat there for a while, facing the ram, and she thought in her small mind about what she should do now. She counted the flock; there were twenty-four of them including the lamb and two goats which were also living there. She crawled quietly up to the nearest sheep; the ram moved with her expectantly. With her hand Aidim felt the sand in the hole the sheep had been digging—it was dry, there was no wetness to be felt at all. A spume of tiredness was on the lips of the nearest sheep, sometimes they snapped at the sand with their mouths and then dropped it together with the last of their saliva. The sand was not watering them, but sopping up the last liquid in them. Aidim walked up to the ram; he was not very thin, but he was breathing heavily from thirst. Aidim took him by the horns, and pulled him along behind her. The ram went at first, then stopped to think about it, but Aidim tugged at him and the ram followed her. Some of the sheep lifted their heads and stopped working to follow the girl and the ram. The other sheep, and the goats, too, quickly caught up with them.
Aidim pulled the ram along in a hurry. Her memory for places was exact, but it was only at daybreak, with the moon extinguished in the sky, that she reached the deep depression where she had dug water for herself from the sand. She left the flock there, the sheep starting to paw the sand again with their front legs, and she went on to the sleeping place of her people. She was resentful that not a single water hole had been dug. Sufyan and Stari Vanka had either died or turned lazy, or perhaps they had drunk enough for themselves without worrying about the lives of the others.
At the stopping place Aidim felt all the sleeping, unconscious people: they were still used to living, they were breathing, not one of them had died. Aidim woke up Sufyan and Stari Vanka and told them to pasture and guard the sheep, and she went off herself to Chagatayev, to bring him back to the camp to eat.
For a long time Chagatayev did not waken when Aidim tried to rouse him; he was slowly dying because his blood had been trickling out of him while he slept and now it could be seen coming out of his wounds in infrequent little spurts and then drying in the sand. Aidim understood it all. She ran back to the place where her people had been sleeping, but they were all moving off to the flock of sheep in whatever way they could: some crawling, some barely getting to their feet, some managing only with the help of others. Aidim searched with her eyes to see which of them had a relatively whole or soft piece of clothing left, but she couldn’t find what she wanted. All their clothing was either thin and bad, or there was very little of it. Molla Cherkezov had a pair of soft wide trousers but because of his blindness they were not clean. Aidim took off her own shirt and looked at it: never mind, she was still a little girl, she hadn’t picked up the infections and the diseases of the older people, the shirt smelled only of sweat and of her body and there was no dirt on it—for the desert is a clean place. Aidim went back to Chagatayev, tore her shirt into strips, and bandaged all the wounds on his body and his head which were still bleeding.
Chagatayev had wakened by now, and turned over, so it was easier for the girl to work. He opened his eyes, and he saw Aidim, and the dead birds, and the sand, as if through a heavy twilight, although the usual sunny morning had begun. He looked at the eagles again, and he saw that the biggest bird was the female, and the other two eagles were much smaller: they were its children. The female had flown back here with its husband’s truest friends, its own children.