reading

In Mother Earth, the heroine Tolgonai tells the story of her life, encompassing the tempestuous Soviet period of change as it affected a Kirgiz village from the 1920th to just after the Second World War. In some ways the tale is allegorical: wife and mother, Mother Courage, telling her story to Mother Earth. From time to time the monologue becomes a short dialogue, with Earth responding.

In Mother Earth, of course, we have the earth herself, the very stuff of memory and wisdom, the only remaining tangible bond with human lives that have made unwritten story.

Aitmatov is an enigma. For a start he is not Russian, but Kirgiz. Yet he has gained distinction through the medium of Russian. He writes not one but two versions of each work: first in Kirgiz, then in Russian, sometimes under a different title and in a different version, in the manner of Conrad, Nabokov and Narayan

He is at once both liberal and conservative; he has been embraced by the Soviet establishment from Khrushchov to Brezhnev, Andropov to Gorbachov. Brezhnev, in fact, once set him alongside Gorky, Mayakovsky, Sholokhov and Alexey Tolstoy as essential reading for young people. He has received the supreme accolade of Lenin Prize for Literature (1963) as well as the State Prize (1968). He was a leading figure in the USSR Writer’s Union, he has headed the Kirgiz Filmmakers’ Guild for 25 years, was a member of the parliament and a Party member; he has been a delegate to the last five Party congresses and a Pravda correspondent. He was on the editorial boards of the two leading Soviet literature journals: Novy Mir and Literaturnaya Gazeta, and the editor of Druzhba Narodov.

He was admired by liberals for his outspoken, daring, innovatory work, his bitter criticism of Stalinism, his airing of taboo subjects like drug addiction, army deserters, women’s infidelity and national conflicts in erstwhile Islamic communities, his religious sympathies (Christian of all things), his anti-bureaucracy, his championing of individual and personal values, his defence of non-Russian ethnic culture and traditions, and his semi-independent international peace initiatives (hosting the ‘Issyk-Kul’ discussion forum in his native Kirgizia, with presence of such notables like Arthur Miller, Claude Simon and Sir Peter Ustinov). The eminent Hungarian philosopher and literary critic George Lukács not only saw in his work hope for a renaissance of Russian Literature and a return to human and artistic perspectives, but felt that his social criticism of the ‘brutal, bureaucratic manipulation of the Stalinist system….was far more powerful than that expressed by Solzhenitsyn.’ There is no doubt that in being a member of a national minority, and a recently backward one at that, he was able in the pre-Gorbachov years to take more liberties than Slavic writers. Today he capitalizes on that status by being one of the leading proponents of Gorbachov’s openness and democratization policies.

Aitmatov also transcends the relatively parochial confines of Kirgiz and Soviet writing by creating works of universal artistic merit and relevance. Some fifty years ago, his first major work won him the admiration of the French writer Louis Aragon who helped rescue him from literary obscurity. Aragon had come by chance upon a Russian version of ‘Jamilia’ in the August 1958 edition of Novy Mir and wrote in astonishment of how, ‘Somewhere in Central Asia at the outset to the latter part of the twentieth century a young man could write a story that, I swear to you, is the most beautiful love story in the world.’

She was walking slowly along the path amidst the stubble, wearing a light freshly laundered dress, a dark quilted jacket, and a white headscarf upon the head. Nobody was about. Summer sounds had faded. No human voices drifting across the field, no Lorries clouding the lanes, no harvesters whirring in the distance, no flock of sheep brought to graze yet.

Beyond the grey highway, far, far away stretched the autumn prairie. Noiselessly above it drifted misty ridges of cloud. Noiselessly the breeze was stealing through the field, rippling the feather grass and dry corn blades, silently departing for the river. There was a smell of grass dampened in the morning frosts. The earth was now resting after harvest. Soon it would be turning cold, the rains would come, the first snow would powder the soil and snowstorms would burst upon plains. But for the moment all was quietness and tranquillity.

Do not disturb her. There she is now, stopping, gazing long about her through time-dimmed eyes.

‘Good-morning, field,’ she quietly says.

‘Good-morning, Tolgonai. So you have come? A little older now. Quite grey. You bear a stick.’

‘Yes, I’m growing old. Another year has passed; and for you, field, another harvest. It is remembrance day.’

‘I know. I have been expecting you, Tolgonai. Yet again you have come alone?’

‘Alone again, as you see.’

‘So you have not told him yet, Tolgonai?’

‘No, my courage failed me.’

‘Do you think no one ever tell him? Do you think it won’t slip out, accidentally?’

‘No doubt. Sooner or later he’ll know it all. He’s a big lad now, he could find out from others. He’s still a child to me thought. And I’m afraid, afraid of raising the subject.’

‘A person should know the truth, Tolgonai.’

‘I realize that. But how I can tell him? After all, what I know, what you know, my beloved field, what everybody knows, he alone does not. When he does, what will he think, how will he look upon the past, will truth reach his heart and brain? He’s still a boy, you know. I do wonder what to do, how to ensure he doesn’t turn his back on life, always looks it straight in the eye.’

‘Oh, if only it were that easy, if in a couple of words I could tell it to him simply like a fairy tale. Recently I’ve thought of little else; who knows what might happen - I could drop dead tomorrow. Last winter when I took sick, I lay there thinking it was all over. It wasn’t so much death that scared me – although had it come I wouldn’t have resisted – it was that I might not have time to open his eyes. I was afraid of bearing his truth off with me. He could never have guessed why I was in such torment. He was concerned, of course, even stayed home from school, fussed about my bed - really mothered me.’

‘Gran, Gran, can I fetch you some water or medicine? Wrap you up a bit warmer?’

‘Yet I could not bring myself to speak. I was tongue-tied. He so trusts, so innocent. Time flies by so quickly and I just can’t find a way of getting down to it. I’ve tried just about everything, yet no matter how much thought I give it, I come to the same conclusion: I want him properly to judge what happened, properly to understand life. I have to tell him not only about himself, not only about his fate, but about many other people and their fates, about myself and my own times. And about you, my field, about all our lives, even about the bike he rides to school unsuspecting.’

‘Perhaps that’s the best way. That way nothing is discarded, nothing is tacked on. Life has mixed us all together in the same dough, tied us all in the one knot. And history is such that not everyone, not even every adult, can work it out. You have to experience it, be part of it. And then again I have second thoughts. I know it’s my duty, and if I could just do my duty it would be that much easier to die.’

‘Sit down, Tolgonai. Don’t stand, you old legs are frail. Sit upon the stone and let’s put our heads together. Do you recall coming here for the very first time?’

‘It isn’t easy, so much happened since then.’

‘Just try to remember. Remember how it was, Tolgonai, right from the beginning.’

I recollect very dimly that when I was tiny I was led here by the hand at harvest time and sat in the shade underneath a haycock. I’d have a crust of bread to stop me crying. And later, when I was bigger, I used to come running here to guard the crops. In springtime shepherds would drive the flocks into the hills from this field. Then I was a fleet-footed, wild slip of lass. Childhood’s such a crazy, carefree time.

I recall the shepherds coming through Yellow Valley. Flock upon flock headed for the cool hills to fresh pastures. I was silly in those days, when I think of it. The flocks would be scampering across the prairie in the great rush and you’d head them off: just see them skid to a halt, leaving a trail of dust hanging in the air a mile high. I’d hide in the wheat field and leap out all of a sudden like a scamp to scare them. The horses would rear up and the shepherds would come chasing after me.

‘Hey you, scallywag, we’ll give it to you.’

But I’d dodge them, escaping through the ditches.

Day after day the chestnut-coloured flocks of sheep would pass, their fat tails bouncing in the dust, their hoofs clattering like hail-stones. Black gruff shepherds would be driving them along. Then came camel caravans of wealthy nomads, with gourds of mare’s milk strapped to their saddles. Girls and young women all decked out in silks, riding frisky horses, would be singing songs of green meadows and clear waters. How I envied them and, forgetting everything around me, I’d be chasing after them down the trail.

‘How I’d love to wear such pretty dresses and tasselled shawls,’ I used to muse, gazing after them as they vanished out of sight.

Who was I then? The barefoot daughter of a hired farmhand. My Granddad had been made a ploughman for life when he’d fallen into debt, and so it continued in the family. Even so, though I never wore a silk dress, I wasn’t bad looking as lass. How fond I was of staring at my shadow. You know, gazing at yourself as you skip along, like admiring yourself in a mirror. I was a real beauty, God’s truth. I must have been about seventeen when I met Suvankul at harvest time. He had come down from Upper Talas that year to do some labouring. Even now I can shut my eyes and see him as clear as day. Still a young lad, about nineteen, no shirt on his back, he’d be marching along, his old quilted jacket tossed over his bare shoulders. Black from the sun like smoked ham, his cheekbones glistened like burnished copper; he seemed all skin and bone, skimpy, but what a barrel chest he had, and arms of steel. You’d go a long way to find a worker like him. He’d bite into the corn lightly, cleanly; you’d just hear the scythe ringing and the shorn wheat-heads falling. It’s a joy to watch such people work. Suvankul was like that. I was reckoned a nimble reaper, but I could never keep up with him. Suvankul would be far ahead, then glance back and return to help; that would annoy me no end, I’d get cross and yell at him.

‘Who asked you to interfere? Let me be, I’ll manage on my own, thank you.’

He would not take offence; he’d just give a chuckle and carry on silently. What did I lose my temper for, silly thing?

He was always the first at work. The sun just coming up, everyone still asleep, and we’d be already on our way to harvest. Suvankul would be waiting for me at the edge of our village, on the pathway.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he’d say.

‘I thought you’d have been gone ages ago,’ I would say each time, knowing full well he wouldn’t leave without me.

And then we would walk along together.

As dawn ripened into day, the snow-capped hills dazzled us with their rays, and the wind from the prairie streamed to meet us in a haze of purest blue. Those summer sunrises were dawn of our love. As the two of us walked along, the whole world changed, as in a fairy tale. And the field – grey, trampled down and ploughed over – became the most beautiful field on earth. An early skylark would greet the breaking dawn with us; it would soar up high, hang suspended in the sky like a distant speck, beat and flutter its wings just like the human heart, and how much abandoned joy would ring out in its songs.

‘See, our skylark is singing,’ Suvankul would say.

Wonderful. We even had our own skylark.

And the moonlit night? Perhaps there will never be another like it. That evening Suvankul and I stayed behind to work by the light of the moon. When the moon, vast and pure, rose above the crest of the dark hill over there, the stars in the sky all opened their eyes together. I felt they could actually see us. We were lying at the edge of the field on Suvankul’s jacket, our pillow the bank of the ditch. It was the softest pillow in the world. That was our first night.

From then on a lifetime together.

Suvankul was quietly caressing my face, my brow, my hair with his toil-worn hand, as heavy as lead; even through his palm I could hear his heart pounding wildly and joyfully.

I recall whispering to him, ‘Suvan, we will be happy, won’t we?’ And he said, ‘If the land and water are divided up equally for all, and if we get our own field, and if we plough and sow and thresh our own corn, that will be our happiness. Folk need no greater happiness, Tolgon. A farmer’s happiness lies in reaping what he sows.’

His words were very dear to me, made me feel good. I hugged him tight and fondly kissed his hot, weather-beaten face over and over again. After that we bathed in the irrigation ditch, splashed about laughing. The water was cool and fresh, sparkling, smelling of the mountain breeze. And then we lay down, holding hands, silently looking up at the stars in the sky. There were so many of them that night.

And the earth rejoiced with us that clear blue night. It too enjoyed the cool and calm. A light hush hung above the whole prairie. Water lapped in the ditch. Sweet clover’s honeyed fragrance made us dizzy; the clover was in full bloom. Now and again the wormwood breath of a hot dry wind wafted to us from somewhere, making the ears of corn at the field’s edge bob and rustle softly. Perhaps such nights happen only once in a lifetime.

At midnight, in the dead of night, I glanced at the sky and saw the Milky Way, or Harvester’s Way as we call it, stretching right across the heavens in a wide silvery band amidst the stars. I remembered Suvankul’s words and felt that perhaps some kind and mighty farmer With a great armful of corn really was crossing the heavens, leaving a trail of strewn chaff and grain. And I imagined that someday, should our dream come true, my Suvankul would be carrying corn from the first threshing just like that. It would be the first wheat’s-head for our bread.

As he walked with that fragrant corn beneath his arm he would leave just the same trail of scattered chaff behind. That was my dream, and the stars dreamed with me. I suddenly felt such a desire for it all to come true that I couldn’t help but speak about it. It was then I first spoke to Mother Earth.

I said, ‘Earth, you support us all upon your bosom; if you don’t grant us happiness then why are you the earth and why are we born at all? We are your children, earth. Grant us happiness and make us happy.’

Those were the words I uttered that night.

New wheatsheaves were piled up everywhere in the stubble. I felt hurt, for I dearly wanted to work alongside him in the early hours.

‘Suvankul, why didn’t you wake me?’ I yelled.

He glanced round at the sound of my voice; I well recall how he looked that morning: stripped to the waist, his strong brown shoulders glistening with sweat. He stood there and gave me a sort of contented quizzical look, as if not recognizing me; then wiping his palm across his face, he said with a smile,’ ‘I wanted you to sleep a little longer.’

‘But I’m working for two now,’ he said.

His words hurt me even more, I all but wept, despite the warm feeling inside me.

‘Where are your promises of yesterday?’ I shouted at him. ‘You said me we would be equal in everything, like one person.’

Suvankul threw down his scythe, ran over, caught me in his arms, picked me up and, with a kiss, said, ‘From now on we shall be as one person, together in everything, my dear, kind little skylark.’

As he carried me in his arms, talking away, calling me his skylark and other funny names, I twined my arms about his neck, giggled and kicked and laughed; only little children are called skylarks. Yet how marvellous it was to hear such words.

Meanwhile the sun was only just rising, peeping from behind the hilltop. Suvankul let me down, put his arm round my shoulders and suddenly shouted up at the sun, ‘Hey, sun, look, this is my wife. Take a good look at her. Pay me for the privilege in sunshine, pay me in light.’

I don’t know whether he was serious or joking, but I suddenly began to cry. Just like that, unable to hold back the surge of joy that filled my breast.

As I think of it now I still cry, silly girl. After all, those were special tears: they come only once in a lifetime. Did you lives really turn out as we dreamed? Yes, they did. Suvankul and I fashioned that life with our own hands, we worked very hard, never letting go of the hoe come summer or winter, shedding much sweat, putting our backs into it.

And when the new times came we sey up house, got some livestock together; in short, we began to live a decent life. But the biggest joy of all was the birth of our sons, three, one after the other, all fine lads. Now and again I have such a dreadful feeling of remorse and ridiculous thoughts assail me: why did I give birth like a ewe every eighteen month, rather than every three or four years, like other people? Perhaps then it would never have happened. And maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t brought them into the world at all. My dear children, I say this out of grief and pain. I am your mother, when all’s said and done, your mother….

I recall the first time they all came here. It was the day Suvankul drove the first tractor into the village. He had spent the entire autumn and winter going back backwards and forwards across the river, doing a tractor driver’s course. We had no idea what good a tractor would be or even what it was. Whenever Suvankul was late coming home, for it was a tidy walk, I used to feel sorry and hurt at the same time.