The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov Page B

life suddenly stirred, brushing past his stomach, flying up to his throat and bursting out in a frenetic, childish scream. Kepek collapsed onto Aisulu like a limp sack. Yerzhan dashed forward, watching with utter horror as a strip of gauze, as bright red with his uncle’s blood as a streak of sunset, fell out of Kepek’s hands on to Aisulu’s white leg, which was left only half-bandaged.
    Aisulu had broken her leg looking for Yerzhan.
     
    No, I didn’t even try to think this story through to the end; it was too terrible for this quiet steppe night with the gentle hammering of the train’s wheels and my heartbeating in time with them. The boy on the upper bunk was muttering incomprehensible words in his sleep, the old man opposite me was snoring nervously, like a ram that has just been stuck. What a nightmare! I thought. Blaming my fears on the stale air in the compartment, I stood up and opened the door slightly. A cool draught was blowing from the corridor. I decided to wait a while for the compartment to cool completely, so I didn’t lie down again.
    The train ran on tirelessly across the night-time steppe. A rare light, or perhaps a star that had fought its way through the dense darkness, moved slowly round the train. When the compartment had filled up with the chilly night air, I cautiously closed the door, but as if responding to my movement, the train slowed and suddenly, with the usual screech of brake blocks in the night, it stopped. I listened. In the distance steps rustled sporadically across the gravel of the embankment. Whoever it was kept stopping, and then the steps would start again, moving closer and getting clearer. Finally, somewhere underneath us, a lantern glinted for a moment, a hammer clanged against brake blocks and a trembling voice spoke into the darkness in Kazakh: ‘So that’s it! Fuck it…’
    I suddenly wanted to shake Yerzhan awake, but I managed to stop myself.
     
    Yerzhan was sleeping uneasily, as usual. They had only just buried Granny Ulbarsyn and the old women fromthe entire district, led by Keremet-apke, the local healer, were still performing their shamanic rituals and saying their prayers at Granny Sholpan’s house. Having lost his wife, Grandad had borne up manfully all the way through the funeral, but on the third day he had gone limp and taken to his bed. Shaken was left to chop wood alone for the hearth under the immense cauldron, go running to the tracks and back, and slaughter a sheep for the wake.
    The way Granny Ulbarsyn had died was strange. In late autumn the lumps on her legs had started swelling up, and no matter how hard Yerzhan rubbed them, they kept getting bigger. ‘Ah, my lumps grow bigger but you haven’t. And you haven’t got any stronger either,’ Granny Ulbarsyn moaned in undisguised reproach.
    The city bride Baichichek had tried to persuade her husband, Shaken, to take old Granny Ulbarsyn to the city for an X-ray, but the old woman flatly refused. Instead she persuaded her own husband to take her on a camel to the healer Keremet-apke. Keremet-apke felt Granny’s pulse, kneaded the bones in her fingers and led her behind a curtain. She tore the material of the curtain in half and then sat beside Granny Ulbarsyn and appealed to Tengri, and to the prophet Makhambet, and to the prophet’s angel. She swayed from side to side, working herself up more and more, then grabbed a whip off the wall and first lashed herself across the knees with it, then lashed the old woman’s legs gently. ‘The devil’s work! The devil’s work!’ And when foam started pouring out of her babblingmouth, she gestured to her daughter standing by the door: ‘Bring it!’ And in an instant her daughter had fetched a scorching-hot sheep’s shoulder blade. Keremet-apke cooled it with her saliva and then held it against Granny Ulbarsyn’s legs.
    ‘For nine days plus nine feed a black ram with twisted horns and then slaughter it on Tuesday!’ she ordered. ‘Rub the warm blood