Dmitry Pakhomov"s cattle breeding farm was located at the edge of a wood with the little river Ligovka flowing by. It was a quiet solitary place without the city bustle and hubbub where lots of birds twitter in fir and pine groves in the morning. Far away, the knocking sound of the woodpecker echoed in the coniferous forest, and at moonlit nights, somewhere beyond the river, nightingales filled the air with their warbling songs.
When we arrived at the farm Dmitry called his friend, also a farmer, living in the neighboring district, to tell him about our problems. He also asked him if there was some vacancy for us. Without breaking the conversation he turned to us saying that there was a job for us.
- What job? - we inquired
- He needs a tractor driver. Can you drive a tractor?
- Yes, of course we can -Ramazanov said quickly and went on - I don"t know about Al Kizim, but for me driving a tractor is a trifling thing! I have a license to drive both a car and a
tractor. I have worked as a tractor driver at Uvada Factory for some time then I carried uvada, that is cotton waste to our Factory which made mattresses for hospitals and prisons. If need be, I can steer a helicopter, a plane and even those space ships, what are they, yes, the American space shuttle or the Russian "Buran" spacecraft . To make a long story short, I am a gifted man and a heaven-born stunt.
Dmitry Staepanovich took it as a joke and burst out laughing. Then he told his friend that one of us could drive a tractor.
The next day Dmitry"s friend took Ramazanov to his farm, while I stayed at Dmitry"s and started working as a herdsman.
In his farm Dmitry had cows, oxen and calves, in fact, 150 heads of cattle all in all. He also had a few pigs, a goat, a horse and a dog by the name of Marshal. The dog"s hair was as white as snow. She got accustomed to me and, like my late dog Muravyed, helped me tend the herd.
Sometimes I would go to make hay sitting in a cart harnessed by horses that knew the way to the meadow and back to the farm. Marshal followed the cart. At the meadow I cut hay, a sickle in my hands, looking like the image of death. The grass would fall like intrepid warriors defending their Motherland against the invaders. Now and then, wishing to have a rest, I would sit on the grass beneath the shady fir-trees watching the sky where the clouds were floating by, looking like uvada i.e. cotton wastes that we receive instead of our wages. The endless sky and the white clouds reminded me of my Motherland where apricot trees blossomed in spring with their blooming flowers looking like the snow-white clouds that had fallen down from above. I was looking at the sky, and it seemed that the sky, too, was staring at me with its big eyes without lashes and pupils.
On hearing the squealing sound of the electric saw and the taps of axes and seeing the fallen trees I involuntarily thought that there were no closer friends to us in the whole wide world than trees.
I wish we would at least follow one example, the way the inhale carbonate and anhydride providing us with fresh oxygen, without which we cannot live a minute in this world! And in token of gratitude we human beings cut them with an axe and saw them to beams and logs and burn them to enjoy the heat they emit. Thinking about it I got up, loaded the cart and returned home.
Once when I was loading the cart a man came up to me, a bottle hand. He was wearing torn trousers, a dirty shirt and a crumpled hat with uncombed hair sticking out from it like a bottle of hay. In short, he resembled a scarecrow set up in a kitchen garden. His unshaved face, his toadstoollike red nose and his shoes made him look still more miserable. He suddenly cried:
- Live! Live! Livatallu-la-lu-laaaa! Then, drinking the wine from the bottleneck he walked away.
When Dmitry Stapanovich came I asked him who that man was. He smiled and told me the story:
- His name is Gregory Pavlovich, and he used to be a well off man working as an inspector. He accepted bribes from farm managers stealing people"s money in that way. Apart from a rich flat he had a luxurious country house and expensive cars. He had another object of wealth which he cherished like the apple of his eye, and that was his young wife by the name of Marusya. Gregory was exceedingly jealous. He never trusted her to anybody, and in particular, to his driver Sergey. Gregory kept a vigilant watch on every step of hers, so to say, burning slowly in the hell of doubts.
When leaving home for work he would lock the door of the house and the gate. He carried the keys in his pocket, like a prison warden. The only one whom he trusted was his wife"s girl friend Ludmila. She was the only one who had the key and had access to Gregory Pavlovich"s house.
Ludmila was Marusya"s inseparable friend and came to her place every day, sometimes staying for the night. One day Gregory Pavlovich came home earlier than usual, and, letting the driver go, entered the house. Then, out of curiosity, he cautiously went up to the door of the bed-room to peep into the keyhole and listen to what his wife was talking about with her girl-friend. When he saw the scene like an image in a photo he stood motionless. The girl-friends were making love. No, they weren"t by far lesbians. Ludmila turned out to be a tranny, that is a woman with a man"s genital organ. Gregory rushed into the kitchen and took a knife. Then, shouting like a special task force officer, he ran into the room. On seeing him the girls shrilled and tried to hide their faces for shame. Ludmila covered her face with a porn magazine while the rest of her body was open. In fear and tremble the girls started begging Gregory Petrovich for mercy. As if making an excuse, Ludmila cried:
- I am not to blame! Your wife wanted me to... It"s all her fault! I told her it wasn"t good. But she told me that she didn"t love you and that you were ...what is it... yes, an impotent. For goodness" sake, don"t kill me! I beg you, do you hear?
- Ok, I will let you live. But give me the key to the house.
- Thank you, Gregory Pavlovich, just a minute...With her trembling hands she took the key out of her bag and gave it to Gregory. He left the room, locked the door behind him and went out into the veranda to take the pail of white paint and the brush. Then he went back into the bed-room. Still trembling with fear, the girl-friends were sitting wrapped in the white silk bed-sheet.
- Ok - said Gregory - if you don"t want me to kill you and cut you to pieces, put the bed-sheet aside and come here.
The girls came up to him in fear. Gregory gave Ludmila the brush and told her to paint Marusya all over, from top to toe. She started painting Marusya while the latter, not wishing to be murdered, did not resist standing like the statue of a woman on a boulevard in Paris. Then he took the pillows on which he had lain with Marusya and cut them open with the knife. Shaking the pillows he poured out the feathers all over Marusya"s painted body. She now looked a horrible creature. Then he told Ludmila that she could go. She picked her things and ran out into the street. It was getting dark outside. Gregory Petrovich took his dissolute wife out into the yard. Then he opened the gate, kicked Marusya out and locked it.
Running for her life, Gregory"s painted wife made her way along the path in the wood across the old cemetery. She went to the house where her sister lived with her family. When she came up to the house she pushed the ring button on the gate. Marusya"s sister came up to the gate and asked:
- Who"s there?
- It"s me, Marusya, please, open the gate quick.
Olga recognized her sister"s voice and opened the gate. When she saw Marusya she fainted on the spot. After a while her husband came out and saw the horrible creature which stood bending over his wife. He was at a loss, and, mechanically, he took a brick from the ground and hurled it at Marusya hitting her right in the head. In other words, he murdered Marusya throwing a brick at her. He was tried for murder and sentenced for a long term of imprisonment. Gregory Pavlovich got off the hook by greasing the palms of prosecutors and judges. Gregory himself told me about it. With time, however, he ruined himself by drinking having lost prestige among the influential people. He lost his job. One day he had his house robbed by burglars who stole all his valuables. Wishing to do away with the sufferer they beat him black and blue, and left quietly thinking that he was dead. Since then on Gregory Pavlovich became the kind of man you saw. It was probably God"s retribution for the sins he had committed and for having robbed people.
Finishing his story Dmitry Stepanovich mused looking at the horizon where the yellow clouds reflected the beams of the rising sun. The clouds were flowing north like multitudinous islands in the boundless ocean. I got up and went to drive the herd into the pen.
The Buran spacecraft (Russian: Буран, "Snowstorm" or "Blizzard"), GRAU index 11F35 K1, was the only fully completed and operational space shuttle vehicle from the Soviet Buran program. The Buran completed one unmanned spaceflight in 1988 before cancellation of the Soviet shuttle program in 1993.