Beauty
(Tale from an educated old man)

PART ONE

This story happened long, long ago, but is still before my eyes: my friends and I, three shakirds^[1], we were returning to our villages from our district madrasah^[2]. To tell the truth, Gylemdar and I, were going to one village – Chuarkul —, and Badretdin was heading to Ishle village, where we planned to leave him and continue on our way. I must add that the mare that lazily and slowly was bringing us back home belonged to Gylemdar. Because we were neighbors from the same village, one spring my family sent the horse to take us home; the next summer, the horse belonging to the family of Gylemdar was sent.

Badretdin was our occasional fellow traveler. To be sure, we gathered at the madrasah at the same time and left it at the same time, but we hadn`t had a chance to return home together before. Badretdin didn`t like to be a burden to other people. When school was over, he would go to the market and join others from his village, or would return to his village on foot, about 30 versts^[3], plodding along. This time we invited him ourselves, insisting on heading home together.

Badretdin was the poorest shakird in our madrasah. No assistance came to him from his home. Very rarely someone from Ishle village brought him millet bread wrapped in a hemp rag or one lump of butter. Badretdin was always embarrassed: «Why did they send it? Tell my Mom that I am not hungry, and that they shouldn`t reduce their share of food». For some reason he did eat that butter, cracking it with awl, and shakirds asked him: «Why do crack it like this?», Badretdin would laugh and answer: «When you eat it with an awl, it lasts longer».

As the proverb says, «A sparrow doesn`t die from hunger in his homeland»<sup>[4]</sup>. And so it was that our Badretdin, even if he was suffering or had a lack of money, continued to study, and he studied very well. It is a well-known fact that a poor shakird in merciless poverty turns out to be very gifted. It is not possible to survive in any other way. A rich shakird, let`s say, even though muddle-headed, could stay in the madrasah as long as he wished, but a poor student, if he studied poorly, would be compelled to leave madrasah after the first winter… Moreover, if a poor student was studying very well, he could slightly improve his financial state.

And our Badretdin, as he was industrious and diligent, from time to time he received some help from rich benefactors; he earned a little as well by, giving help to weak students to prepare their home assignments; sometimes he helped teachers and copied prayers for sick people and Ayat al-Kursi verse^[5] from the Qur’an, and received some coppers for it. In brief, he was never without work. At the same time he never asked for work or for help. «I am poor and it is your duty to help me» – we never saw such impudent misery on his face.

By nature he was a steady and patient young man. He didn’t fawn over others, didn’t brag, answered good with good, and bad with nothing; – somehow he managed to stay away from bad. What is interesting is that, – no matter how down-and-out he was, he never asked anything from anyone. Usually, shakirds asked this or that from him, as many things were necessary for life in the madrasah – a needle, thread, a thimble, an awl, a knife, tweezers, a mirror, various pens, paper and notebooks, even glue and wax, which he kept in a large belted and hinged chest which he made on his own. How did he manage to collect all these objects? As always, he decided that his poverty shouldn`t be a burden to anyone, and he did his best, even at the cost of food. It is true; he needed thick notebooks for classes. And the notebooks he had he wrapped very neatly, making a handle of foil not to smear the pages and treasured his notebooks carefully.

At that time, in other words years before the revolutions^[6], shakirds were enthralled with new literature that was appearing. Literature had turned into something like bread for us!.. – Every shakird was writing songs, poems, even abstracts from novels into his thick notebook. Every other shakird was writing poems. Many of them were captivated with Sagyt Ramiev^[7]. They followed him, they tried to look like him, and they learned his poems by heart… Even more than Ramiev, for all of us the most perfect, the most impressive, the most copied, the most beloved and read was Tukay^[8].

The ‘poetic’ disease touched our Badretdin as well. He too was writing poems, but never read what he wrote to anyone. It was difficult to persuade him to read. But if he was reading it, his poems were not written as were poems of other shakirds, in a complaining tone, but were short poems that described the natural phenomena or expressed his attempt to share life philosophy.

So strange, mysterious and nice a young gentleman was our group mate Badretdin!

Well, to cut a long story short, we were coming back to our villages, three of us in a comfortable carriage. The road was smooth with no dust. The gray gelding was producing «gort-gort» sounds because of the steep descent, and was leisurely jogging its way… Not long ago, in the middle of May, the first warm rains came. Now everything was growing quickly, rising up: rye spires and wheat were thick, dark-green, like moustaches of young men, and started to stretch; unplowed grass was breaking through last year dry grass, flowers were in bloom here and there… Along the way bindweeds first pink «bells» were seen… No need to stress that it was the purest, the simplest, the nicest time!

For us, who were getting withered along all winter, this boundless, vast, light, warm world was adorable and desired, we couldn`t get enough of it, were breathing it, smelling it, looking at it. We stopped the carriage for a while and walked in the grass to feel the warmth of the ground with our feet, ran and got caught up in the grass, gathered flowers. Badretdin found wild green onion, we chewed it. I found and picked up one plant that is called «temlekay»^[9] in our village. It is long with four-sided stem. We peeled and ate it. Badretdin told us that this plant is called «stableman lash» by Bashkirs, as when the buds on its end turn into blue flowers, it resembles a lash with a brush.

And our Gylemdar, was looking for gophers, stopped, whistled, covering his face with two hands; but a cunning animal probably understood that it was a whistle by a shakirds, with the result that it didn`t come out of his burrow, and didn`t sit on his hind paws with his ears up.

… Singing larks accompanied us along the way as if from that infinite radiant clear sky one bewitching melody was unceasingly trembling and dinging. Do you know what is the magic of lark`s singing?.. First of all, you might have noticed that when a lark sings, a serene meditative silence spreads over the ground. It is as if the whole of nature, every living being, like educated people say, are listening only to him in awe, keep silent, and indulge in glad, enjoyable bliss… The second magic is that when a lark is singing, the world somehow expands, becomes wider and brighter. Like from the high sky, where a tiny bird is singing, the earth seems boundless, enormous, amazingly calm, luminous…

I don`t know if other birds are singing along with lark – I didn`t pay attention, but one bird`s singing reaches our ears, making us shudder, as if all the larks of the world started to sing together. A cuckoo bird! A strange bird, never showing up to people, that was created by nature to make people remember something very important… Passing by a bluish forest we heard its warning song that made us sink into reveries.

In such elated mood, we were joyfully on our way home and finally approached the Ishle village that was in the valley opposite red-sloped mountains. When we set off, Badretdin invited us to have some tea in Ishle before we continued our journey. As it is very natural for shakirds to have fun together, we agreed to visit our groupmate.

When we reached the village, Badretdin took the reins and turned the horse from the main road to the right, thereby riding along the road covered with green grass headed to the farthest street. Before long, he stopped the horse in front of the house that was standing in the distance, separate from other houses.

We had known that we were coming to the house of poor people, but we hadn’t expected such a miserable household. Actually, it was difficult to call it a household. In a bare meadow a small, old, shabby house was fallen half down in the ground. Its straw roof was rotted, blackened, and started to turn into manure. Owing to this weight some of the logs of the house were sticking out, the door and windows were lopsided, and the windows had become green-bluish with time… There was no gate, no fence, and only two poles separating the household from the street and the field… The yard was covered with field grass in which buzzing grasshoppers were jumping. It was a sign that there were no cattle in the household.

We tried not to show our bewilderment to Badretdin. We entered the open yard that showed no wheel tracks and stopped the horse near to an old barn that was covered with twigs. One runty, white-faced, red-bearded, thin man came out of the house. He was dressed in a hemp shirt, pants of woven cloth with large patches on his knees, and a miserable hat on his head. Resting in worn-out boots, his legs were wrapped in cloth. He came close to the carriage and greeted only Badretdin, saying: «My son!», – He lent two hands to us without saying anything, then immediately went to the horse to unbridle it…

Badretdin picked up his chest and hurried inside. A woman appeared at the door, but very quickly went back in. It must have been Badretdin`s mother, I was embarrassed by her hesitation and hiding back in the house.

When the horse was unharnessed, Badretdin came out of the house with a bucket of water, a ladle and a towel. Over the grass we poured water on each other`s hands to refresh ourselves. A thought came to my mind: «They do not even have a kumgan.»<sup>[10]</sup>. – We didn`t have any power to pretend that we don`t see anything and do not know anything; nor did we have words to enter into idle talk. But Badretdin himself was very calm; at least we didn`t notice any embarrassment or discomfort.

When we washed ourselves, we greeted the owners, and entered the house. Badretdin`s father met us with the words: «Come in, shakirds!»