Part one
That summer, wolf cubs were born for the first time in the Moyunkum Reserve at the wolf Akbar and the wolf of Tashchaynar. With the first snow, it was time for hunting, but how did the wolves know that their primordial prey - saigas - would be needed to supplement the meat-delivery plan, and that someone would suggest using the "meat resources" of the reserve for this.
When a wolf pack surrounded the saigas, helicopters suddenly appeared. Whirling in the air, they drove a frightened herd towards the main force — the UAZ hunters. Wolves also ran. At the end of the chase of the wolves, only Akbar and Tashchaynar remained alive (two of them were killed under the hooves of an insane mass, the third was shot by one of the hunters). They, tired and wounded, wanted to quickly find themselves in their own lair, but there were people near him collecting saiga corpses - a meat-giving plan gave these homeless people a chance to earn some extra money.
The senior in the company was Ober, the former 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 “aboriginal” Uzyukbai. In their military all-terrain vehicle, among the cold carcasses of saigas, lay Avdiy Kallistratov, the son of the late deacon, expelled for heresy from the seminary.
At that time, he worked as a freelance employee of the regional Komsomol newspaper: readers liked his articles with his unusual arguments, and the newspaper readily printed them. Over time, Avdiy hoped to express his “new thinking ideas about God and man in the modern era on the pages of the newspaper as opposed to the dogmatic postulates of archaic dogma,” but he did not realize that against him were not only church postulates unchanged for centuries, but also the powerful logic of scientific atheism. Nevertheless, "his fire burned in him."
Obadiah had a pale, high brow. The bulging gray eyes reflected a restless spirit and thought, and shoulder-length hair and a brown beard gave the face a gracious expression. Mother Obadiah died in early childhood, and the father, who invested his whole soul in raising his son, soon after he entered the theological 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 driven out of a small office apartment in which he had lived all his life.
Then his first trip to Central Asia took place: the newspaper gave the task to trace the ways of the penetration of anasha's drug into the youth environment of the European regions of the country. To complete the task, Obadiah joined the company of "messengers for Anasha." The messengers went for anasha to the Primoyunkum steppes in May, when hemp blossoms. Their groups were formed at the Kazan station in Moscow, which brought together couriers from all over the Soviet Union, especially from port cities, where it was easier to sell the drug. Here Obadiah learned the first rule of messengers: to communicate less in public, so that in case of failure not to betray each other. Usually messengers collected hemp inflorescences, but the most valuable raw material was “clay” - a mass of hemp pollen that was processed into heroin.
A few hours later, Obadiah was already driving south. He guessed that at least a dozen messengers rode on this train, but he knew only two of whom he joined at the station. Both messengers arrived from Murmansk. The most experienced of them, Petruha, was about twenty years old, the second, sixteen-year-old Lenya, went on a fishing trip for the second time, and already considered himself an experienced messenger.
The more Avdiy delved into the details of this industry, the more he became convinced that “in addition to the private and personal reasons that give rise to a tendency to vice, there are social reasons that allow the occurrence of this kind of youth disease.” Avdiy dreamed of writing about this "a whole sociological treatise, and it is best to open a discussion - in print and on television." Because of his detachment from real life, he did not understand that “no one is interested in saying such things openly, and this was always explained by considerations of the supposed prestige of our society”, although in fact everyone was simply afraid to risk their official position . Obadiah was free from this fear and longed to help these people "by personal participation and by personal example to prove to them that a way out of this pernicious state is possible only through their own rebirth."
On the fourth day of the journey, the Snowy Mountains appeared on the horizon - a sign that their journey was almost over. The messengers had to get off at Zhalpak-Saz station, get on the way to the Moyunkumsky state farm, and then go on foot. The whole operation was invisibly led by Himself, whom Obadia had never seen, but realized that this mysterious man was very distrustful and cruel. Having had a bite at the station, Avdiy, Petruha and Lenka 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 a motorcycle to the building they plastered. Avdi 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 upon a very dense thicket of hemp. Each newcomer had to give Him a present - a matchbox of “plasticine”. “The case turned out to be uncomplicated, but exhausting to the limit and in a barbaric way. It was necessary, stripping 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 from the body in the form of a homogeneous mass. Obadiah was forced to do this only by the prospect of meeting with Himself.
Soon they set off on their return journey with backpacks packed full of anasha grass. Now the messengers faced the most difficult: to get to Moscow, bypassing police raids at Asian stations. Again, the mysterious Himself directed the whole operation, and all the way Obadiah prepared himself to meet with him. At the railway where the messengers were supposed to board a freight car, they met Grishan with two messengers. When Obadiah saw him, he immediately realized that this was Himself.
Part two
Grishan had a mediocre appearance and resembled a "cornered predatory animal that wants to rush, bite, but does not dare, and yet it is brave and takes a threatening pose." He joined the group of Obadiah in the guise of a simple messenger. Having talked with Avdi, Grishan quickly realized that he belonged to the breed of “obsessed idiots” and went to Moyunkum only in order to fix what it was impossible to fix for one person. Obadiah and Grishan had completely 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 discussions about God, but Obadiah could not leave.
In the evening, it was time to board the freight. Grishan sent two people to create an “illusion of fire” along the tracks. Noticing the bonfire spread out on rails, the driver slowed down, and the whole company managed to drop into an empty carriage. The train moved towards Zhalpak-Saz. Soon everyone relaxed and let loose a weed of cigarettes in a circle. Only Avdiy and Grishan did not smoke. Avdiy realized that Grishan allowed them to “get high” in spite of him. Although Avdiy pretended to be indifferent to him, in his heart he "was indignant, suffering from his powerlessness to oppose something to Grishan."
It all started with the fact that Petrukh, who was completely delirious, began to pester Avdi with a proposal to drag on from a greasy bull. Unable to stand it, Avdiy grabbed the goby and threw it out the open door of the car, then he began to shake the hemp out of his backpack there, urging everyone to follow his example. The messengers attacked Avdiah, "now he has personally witnessed the ferocity, cruelty, and sadism of drug addicts." One Lenka tried to separate the fighting. Grishan, on the other hand, looked at this, not hiding his gloating. Avdiy understood that Grishan would help him, he could only ask, but Avdiy could not ask for help from Grishan. In the end, Obadiah, beaten to the death, was thrown out of a train moving at full speed.
Obadiah lay in a cuvette near the railway, and he saw that memorable conversation between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, in which the future Messiah did not ask for mercy either.
Obadiah came to himself at night, in the pouring rain. Water filled the cuvette, and it made Obadiah move. His head remained clear, and he was surprised, "what a surprising clarity and volume of thoughts overshadow him." Now Obadia seemed to exist in two different eras: in the present he was trying to save his dying body, and in the past he wanted to save Teacher, rushing about along the hot streets of Jerusalem and realizing that all his attempts were in vain.
Obadiah waited the night under the railway bridge. In the morning, he discovered that his passport had turned into a lump of wet paper, “and only two banknotes — twenty-five rubles and a dozen” —of which he had to get to his native Prioksk, were more or less preserved from money. There was a country road under the bridge. Avdiy was lucky - almost immediately he was picked up by a hitch and taken to the Zhalpak-Saz station.
Obadiah was so ragged and suspicious that he was immediately arrested at the station. In the police station where he was brought, Obadia was surprised to see almost the entire team of messengers, with the exception of Grishan. Obadiah called to them, but they pretended not to recognize him. The policeman already wanted to let Obadiah go, but he demanded that he also be put in jail, saying that they would repent of their sins and thereby be cleansed. Taking Avdiy for a madman, a policeman took him to a waiting room, asked him to leave as far as possible and left. The people who had beaten Obadiah should have made him want revenge, but instead it seemed to him that "the defeat of the Anasha miners is also his defeat, the defeat of the good-bearing altruistic idea."
Meanwhile, Obadiah was getting worse. He felt that he was completely ill. An elderly woman noticed this, called an ambulance, and Avdiy got into the jalpak-Saz station hospital. On the third day, the same motorcycle girl who came to Uchkuduk came to him. The girl, Inga Fedorovna, was a friend of the station doctor, from whom she learned about Obadiah. Inga was studying Moynkum cannabis, the story of Avdia was very interested in her, and she came to find out if he needed scientific information about Anasha. This meeting was the beginning of a "new era" for Obadiah.
Returning to Prioksk, Avdiy discovered that the editorial attitude to the material he had extracted and to him personally had radically changed. He did not want to publish his essay, and editorial friends looked away, meeting his gaze. Now it was easier for Avdi to survive the disappointment, because he could share his problems with Inga. She also told Avdy that she divorced her husband - a military pilot - immediately after the birth of her son. Now the child lived in Dzhambul with her parents, and she dreamed of taking him to her. In the fall, Inga planned to introduce Avdia to her son and parents.
Arriving in the fall to Inga, Avdiy did not find her at home. The letter that Inga left him at the post office on demand said that her ex-husband wanted to take her son from her through court, and she had to leave urgently. Avdiy returned to the station, where he was met by Kandalov nicknamed Aubert. On the morning of the next day, Obadiah, along with the "junta," went on a raid to the Moyunkum reserve.
The extermination of saigas had a terrible effect on Obadiah, and he, as then, in the carriage, began to "demand that this massacre be stopped immediately, urging the feral hunters to repent and turn to God." This "served as a pretext for reprisal." Aubert arranged a trial, as a result of which Obdiah was beaten to a half death and crucified on a clumsy saxaul. Then they got into a car and drove away.
And Obadia saw a huge water surface, and above the water - the figure of Deacon Kallistratov, and Obadia heard his own childish voice reciting a prayer. “The final waters of life were approaching.” And the executioners of Obadiah slept soundly one and a half kilometers from the place of execution - they drove off to leave Obadiah alone. At dawn, Akbar and Tashchaynar sneaked up to their ruined den and saw a man hanging on saxaul. Still alive, the man raised his head and whispered to the she-wolf: "You have come ...". These were his last words. At that time, the noise of the motor was heard — the executioners were returning — and the wolves left the Moynkum savannah forever.
For a whole year, Akbar and Tashchaynar lived in the Adaldash reeds, where five cubs were born to them. But soon they began to build a road to mining, and the ancient reeds were set on fire. And again the wolves died, and again Akbar and Tashchaynar had to leave. They made their last attempt to continue the clan in the Issyk-Kul basin, and this attempt ended in a terrible tragedy.
Part three
On that day, the shepherd Bazarbay Noygutov became a guide to geologists. Having conducted geologists and received 25 rubles and a bottle of vodka, Bazarbay went straight home. On the road I could not stand it, dismounted by the stream, took out the desired bottle and suddenly heard a strange cry. Bazarbay looked around and found a wolf den with very small wolf cubs in the thickets. This was the lair of Akbar and Tashchaynara, who were hunting that day. Without hesitation, Bazarbai thrust all four cubs into saddlebags and hurried away to get as far away as possible before the wolves arrived. The wolves of these Bazarbay were going to sell very expensively.
Returning from the hunt and not finding children in the den, Akbar and Tashchaynar followed the trail of Bazarbai. Having caught up with the shepherd, the wolves tried to cut off his path to the lake and drive him into the mountains. But Bazarbay was lucky - Boston Urkunchiev’s nightmare appeared on his way. Bazarbay hated this collective farm leader and envied him in black, but now he did not have to choose.
The owner was not at home, and Boston's wife, Gulumkan, received Bazarbai as a dear guest. Bazarbay immediately demanded vodka, fell apart on the carpet, and began to talk about his today's “feat”. The cubs were removed from the bags, and one and a half year old son of Boston began to play with them. Soon Bazarbai took the wolf cubs and left, and Akbar and Tashchaynar remained near the Boston Compound.
Since then, a dreary wolf howl has been heard every night near Boston's farm. The next day, Boston went to Bazarbay to buy wolf cubs from him. Bazarbai met him unfriendly. He didn’t like everything in Boston: his fur coat was solid, his horse was good, he was healthy and clear-eyed, and his wife was beautiful. In vain did Boston convince Bazarbai that the cubs should be returned to the den. He did not sell the wolf cubs, he had an argument with Boston.
On that day, wolves left their lair forever and began wandering around, without fear of anyone. "And they started talking more about them when Akbar and Tashchaynar broke the wolf taboo and began to attack people." “A terrible glory went about Akbar and Tashchaynar,” but no one knew the real reason for the wolf’s revenge, and did not suspect “about the hopeless longing of the wolf mother for the wolf cubs stolen from the den." And Bazarbai at that time, selling cubs, drank money and everywhere boasted about how great he had sent Boston, "this unrevealed secret fist."
And the wolves returned to the compound of Boston. A wolf howl kept him awake. I involuntarily recalled a difficult childhood. Boston's father died in the war when he was in second grade, then his mother died, and he, the youngest in the family, was left to his own devices. He achieved everything in life with hard work, therefore he believed that the truth was on his side, and did not pay attention to blasphemy. Only in one of his actions did he repent so far.
Gulumkan was Boston's second wife.He worked and was friends with her late husband Ernazar. At that time, Boston sought to secure the land on which his flocks grazed, for his permanent use. Nobody agreed to this - everything looked very much like private property. The state farm party organizer Kochkorbaev was especially opposed. And then Boston and Ernazar came up with the idea: to overtake cattle all summer for the Ala-Mongyu pass, to the rich Kichibelsky grazing. They decided to go to the pass and outline the path for the flock. The higher they climbed the mountains, the thicker the snow became. Due to 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 its bottom. Boston could do nothing to save a friend, and then he hastened for help. He put all the harness on the ropes, so he had to go on foot, but then he was lucky - in the foothills one of the shepherds played a wedding. Boston led people to a crack, then climbers arrived in time and said that they couldn’t get Ernazar’s corpse out of the gap - it was frozen deep into the ice. And until now, Boston has a dream about how he goes down into the crack to say goodbye to a friend.
Six months later, Boston's first wife died. Before her death, she asked her husband not to go on a walk, but to marry Gulumkan, who was her friend and distant relative. Boston did just that, and soon their son Kenjesh was born. The children of Boston and Gulumkan 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 Boston's house every night. Finally, Boston could not stand it and decided to watch the pair of wolves near the flock. They will have to be killed - there was no other way. It was not easy for Boston: the charge of protecting the wolves was added to the charge of Ernazar's death. His two enemies - Kokchorbaev and Bazarbay - united, and now they poisoned him, drove him to a standstill. Only Tashchaynara managed to kill Boston, Akbar managed to escape.
The world for Akbar has lost its value. At night, she came to Boston's house and sniffed silently in the hope that the wind would convey the smell of wolf cubs to her. Summer came, Boston overtook cattle for summer grazing and returned for his family. Before departure, they drank tea, and Kengesh played in the yard. No one noticed how Akbar crept in and took the child away. Boston grabbed the gun and started shooting at the she-wolf, but missed all the time - was afraid to get into her son, whom Akbar carried on her back. And the wolf, meanwhile, went further and further. Then Boston took aim more carefully and fired. When he ran to the fallen Akbar, she was still breathing, and Kenjesh was already dead.
Not remembering himself with grief, Boston loaded his gun, went to Bazarbai and shot him point-blank, avenging everything. Then he turned and went “to the lakeside side to surrender to the authorities there.” <...> That was the outcome of his life. "
