Disrupted Breath

He dreamed of only one thing – to nuzzle into the mom's dark dress. She could pat his hear and calm him down. And then he could exactly know that he was alive…

The mother was kneading a dough. Her hands were in flour up to the elbow. Shamil was laying on a cover on the low bed. He was watching her working wife. When she saw her son with red hands, she flashed a look to husband.

– Mom!!! – cried the child.

He thought she would jump at him. But she continued quietly beating dough.

– Wash your hands in a wash basin. – said severely father. – Tears are the distaff.

Aslanbektried not to cry. His eyes have quickly dried. Children understand well when they is no pity for them. They take this and change their minds. Aslanbek remembered for a long time his mother not jumped at him, not patted. He remembered this for a life. And he never waited for someone to feel pity about him.

Sometimes while sitting on a usual place Aslanbek heard a sough in mountains like some faraway sea wash. Sure it didn't occur to him a mind that it could be a sea wash because he hadn't ever seen a sea. Aslanbek decided to ask the oldest and most honored man in aul, the wok stag Rashid what this sound could be.

There was a little number of wok stages. Only three persons. First Aslanbek thought they lived for ever. Nothing changed. The old men were born the olds like he was born a little boy. And that may always be the case. Later one of the old man died and the boy understood that it was not the case. He didn't know why he didn't go to ask the question to his father or mother.

«What a roaring is heard in mountains?»

«One day the mountains will become a flat land» – the old man answered. But Aslanbek understood nothing.

«It seems to be a moaning…» – the boy cheeped very low.

The old man took a long hard look at him from under the beetling brows. Aslanbek was afraid that he had asked something that shouldn't be asked and run away. The wok stag Rashid was deaf.

Aslanbek's bare foots were flying swiftly. The old man followed him with eyes for a long time…

… The whole family set at the festive table. It was Kurban Bayram again.

There still were blooded knives in the yard. The mutton head lied in the grass. A steam was curling above the big back. The appetizing pilaf emitted a spicy bushy odor. Everybody was assembled. Shamil, Patimat, Ahmet, three sisters, three-years old baby. Only Aslanbek was absent.

– So?!!! – Shamil bellowed. The frightened mother dropped her head into the shoulders. And run out from the room. She was running across the yard, near a blooded head, near the blood which had already sunk in the ground and around which were already circling fat flies, father and farther… She knew where to go.

Aslanbek set at his usual place on a hillside and was watching the mountains. Now he wanted to know exactly what was there – behind the hill? And what was behind that hill? And what was behind that top? But the look was unable to help him. To see it with his eyes he had to go there.

– Go home quickly! – mother asked feverishly.

The boy understood that mother had already got a scolding. He went near her.

– Eat! – a plate with pilaf occurred in front of his face. A hot odor blasted hardly his nose. Everybody was chewing hungrily. Aslanbek didn't want to eat. Going home he saw the cut head in the yard. It would be better if he didn't see it. It was disgust.

– Arist… crat or what? – said Shamil heavily a foreign word looking at his son. Aslanbek understood that it was a swearing but didn't know the meaning of the word.

– If you will not eat it I will do pilaf of you! – father said.

Mastering a sickness Aslanbek put several spoons into the mouth. The blood, flies and mutton head was still floating before his eyes. He was eating because knew that the father didn't joke. He could do everything. The boy knew it the best. He was eating and strangling. It seemed to him that a little bit more and all the meal would come back.

Shamil finished eating the first. He smoothed his face and beard after a sort prayer. All the family put the spoons. And followed his lead. Somebody chewed and with a big hunger was still looking at unfinished pilaf. Only one person was glad to stop dinner – Aslanbek.

… Salman became his dotah-friend. Now they threw stones in his hillside together. They were in competition of who would make a good shot more times. Sometimes Aslanbek was listening for something.

– Do you hear? – he asked the friend one day. – Like the mountains are moaning…

– No. I don't hear anything. – Salman answered.

Little by little Aslanbek's life changed. Domestic duties added: to clean beat of sheep, to bring firewood and sometimes to chap their little stock.

Two or three times a week in the aul came a teacher. Not going but arriving. And this was the main entertainment of boys. If she had no car which she was driving herself, the study would be meaningless. Only for such a spectacle and for that they could approach this wonder and even touch it they would stop at nothing. It was the old and great «Volga». For adults who left the aul many times and saw big cities «Volga» was only a rattletrap car. But children adored it. Till this moment Aslanbek hadn't see any machinery except father's Kalashnikov gun which was called by father «kalash». «If you don't have kalash you are not worth a rush».

Once when Aslanbek was listening to the mountains Shamil began to talk about the boy with his wife.

– I don't even know if he could be a real man, – he said.

Patimat pulled away from back cleaning. But she was silent. She got used to be silent.

– What do you think of him? – her husband asked. – He doesn't like to run and rig like other boys…

– Seems he isn't a wise guy…

– Then why do you like him more than others?! – Shamil raised the voice.

– Me?

– Yes.

The mother took a breath.

– I visited wok stag Rashid. He said that Aslanbek was born like an old man. That it happens. Sometimes.

… Several years had passed. Aslanbek and Salman should be ten.

More and more often Aslanbek heard some breathes and moaning in the mountains. He didn't understand why nobody else hear this.

– It's wind! – Salman said joking.

– These are stones falling down, – his mother said.

– You have noise in ears, – his brother Ahmet said.

Aslanbek missed school often because of sheep tending. Their own as well as common. The feedings were quite large but wasted very quickly. Every time he had to drive a stock farther from aul. Shortly there was no place in the near area where he hadn't driven the stock. He had seen long ago that behind the nearest hill there is other one. Similar. But what was behind the top? Is that another similar top?

Aslanbek knew that there was one more feeding. But if was far away. The ice makes grass tick. But there was no other water near at hand. But only verdurous pastures.

He liked looking at his sheep. He often thought of who will be chosen for the holiday? And why it was particularly this mutton? Why not the next one?

In the family of Shamil's relatives was born a first-born. On this occasion there were killed muttons. The total aul was celebrating. The happy father shot with a gun.

And thus happened something that Aslanbek could never expect. Shamil gave in his hand a knife and asked to kill one of the muttons he tended.

– He is still a little boy! – mother tried to persuade Shamil.