The ravines are especially spectacular at this time, especially in those places where the narrow hollow-ways join them back to back. Here, they seem to escape the wrinkled mountains right into the flat plain and turn into the wide channels of mythical creeks and streams, with bottoms strewn with coarse sand and gravel, their oval banks covered with spongy loess. On this soft, dry soil, the tiny flowers are growing densely, forming conglomerations of fanciful pink, green and white patterns, resembling flower beds in the parks of southern cities, those embellished with dates and slogans. Vibrant green islands of plant life can be seen on the pink rocks of the granite massif, towering above the plain. Its ancient stones are already stricken by a mesh of cracks, formed under the influence of tectonic processes and weathering; in the course of the winter, they’ve accumulated the scant moisture, and the grass found it, sending down its clingy roots and fibers into the granite.

On the plain, on the slopes of the hills and in the hollows you can come across small clearings of orange tulips: they are smaller than the garden variety, but they are pretty to look at, too. There are also white mushrooms in the desert, their stout hats ungainly spreading along the infirm sand as if someone scattered pieces of melted cheese with the careless hand, and now it dries and cracks under the rays of the scorching sun. People say that five years ago the tulips covered the desert in a thick carpet in the spring, and the mushrooms were there in spades. It is easy to believe that, because even in the first year of her stay here, Maya found both mushrooms and tulips in the neighborhood, when she wandered alone through the strange, never-before-seen lands. Now, urban folks have to drive tens of kilometers out of the city to get mushrooms and flowers.

In April, the air is clear, the sun does not burn yet, and the desert tan is every bit as good as the seaside one. For Maya, every April weekend was a holiday. With a book and a little cold water in a thermos, she went to the mountains and there, hiding out in some dead gorge, she would strip naked and bathe in the gentle sunlight. Within two or three days, her skin acquired a pleasant golden-bronze color, much to everyone’s surprise during her future holidays at the seaside.

Once, when she was sunbathing on a small plateau near the watershed, Maya discovered a way to feel the infinity of the universe. In order to attain that feel, she had to lie on top of the mountain so as to see the sky everywhere: not only above, but also from the sides and under her body, and imagine that the Earth is just a small ball, and she lies on it and covers up most of it with her back. And then she would start to feel her body hovering in the real emptiness, surrounding her from all sides, with neither top, nor bottom, nor end, nor edge. And this space is not imaginary, no, it is right here, by her side! Infinity begins already where the flat surface of the warm granite ends, she could feel it there, she could feel it below, under her body, and everywhere else – on the left, on the right and at the center; bang! And you are floating effortlessly and flying into the azure abyss…

In spring, the most numerous, and, perhaps, the dominant inhabitants of the desert come to life – the turtles. In Maya’s opinion, these did not dwindle in numbers in the last few years. In April, the turtles can be found everywhere. They are crawling slowly through the sand, rolling over its thin ripples, dropping into building pits, falling under the wheels and caterpillars of passing cars, but, nevertheless, keep moving steadily towards their favorite pastures. There are huge turtles, of the size of an entire telephone set, with a roughened thick shell and deep black and yellow patterns pressed into it as though made with a powerful pressing engine. Their paws are thick and strong, with a comb of blunt, blue claws. This large reptile is very catious: at the sight of humans, it quickly hides its head and paws in its shell, keeping them inside even when being turned on its back, which is the most uncomfortable position for a turtle. These giants usually become the prey of connoisseurs of pilaf and turtle soup.

There is, however, a rarer, smaller variety of turtles with a soft bluish shell. Like all kids, they are very energetic and careless, and never hide their heads after falling into human hands. Children capture them, bring them home to play, walk with them, feed them grass and green onions. But, in the end, a turtle held in captivity dies.

The medium-sized turtles – the most common ones – are used in the production of ashtrays – the exotic souvenirs of the desert. Maya was not keen of their look: the imprint of a spinal column on the inner side of their shell made her cringe and immediately recall the barbaric way of killing animals: once she saw an electric welder familiar to her plucking bloodied flesh that was still alive out of the corneous carapace with a steel electrode…

The abundance of turtles soon becomes habitual: they cease to catch the eye and stop to be seen as living creatures. The shell of the desert tortoise is not strong enough: it cannot even withstand the weight of a car, bursting, exploding with blue intestines, quickly drying out and dissipating under the hot air and sand, while shell fragments turn white and lay there under the scorching sun for a long time, without causing neither irritation, nor regret. The turtles are getting killed not only by fans of their sweet meat and lovers of patterned ashtrays but also by anybody and everybody, who do it just for fun, because the animals are mute, because they can be kicked, whacked with a stone or dropped on asphalt, thrown into the water (now, let’s see if they can swim!), put on hot coals (will they manage to get out in time?) No one protects turtles and no one stands up for them, as though they are complete outsiders in this desert…

By the end of April, the air becomes unbearably hot, as the plants quickly wilt, dry up and become scarce. Here and there, you can only see smooth, as if polished by the glass-dust, stalks of dried ferrule, that stand up like white bones covered with sand dust. The turtles also disappear: they burrow into the sand and sleep until the next spring. The active life of turtles lasts for ten to twelve days a year. For such a short period of time, people never get a chance to wipe them out, so, all the cruelty of civilization notwithstanding, most of these reptiles manage to lay eggs, stock up calories and fall into a long hibernation, in order to appear a year later and once again indulge in plowing the hot sand with their clumsy paws.

The desert fades and becomes hotter and hotter. In May, the sun-warmed land no longer has time to cool down overnight. It becomes infernally hot: somewhere between forty and forty-five degrees Celsius in the shade every day.

Hot, hot, hot! The breeze does not refresh, it just comes in heat waves, each one of them hotter than the one preceding it. Sometimes, it seems that the heart would fail under this infinite heat buildup and break out of the chest cage. The nerves get frayed; the body gets soft and flabby. Sweat pours in buckets – the face, neck, and back are constantly wet… The handled objects quickly become wet and slippery. Salty sweat makes scratches sting, tickles the swollen eyelids, and corrodes the metal in areas where it is most often touched by the naked hand. The iron gets hot and sears the skin the same way it would burn in the biting frost. The skin pores get wide open, like windows, and you constantly feel them exude the excess heat, removing it from the body. If you decide to take a cool bath, then you’d better stay there as long as possible, because, until the moment you sweat again in the open air, you will suffer from internal stuffiness, the terrible pressure growing in every cell, bursting from within, like a premonition of a heat stroke. Sometimes you cannot stand it and just start running round in circles, not knowing where to hide or find shelter from this endless heat.

The sky is frightening: it is dominated by blazing, dazzling whitish tones. The Sun is getting closer to the Earth, filling up the sky above with a fiery mass, burning and burning relentlessly, uncontrollably and unrestrainedly. The stones, sand, and concrete – everything gets hot, and you cannot figure out where this tormenting heat comes from.

Mellow, half-asleep people are working according to a schedule made to last by the authorities of the country, without any regard to the heat. They stare bluntly at the production processes and resolve other issues, pull the levers of excavators, steer heavy cars and drink, drink, drink… The most experienced ones prefer hot green tea, others drink black one, the amateurs and women drink iced water, while those with no means of making drinks stand in the lines for a mug of kvass. And everyone is counting the moments until the evening, the time when the scorching sun above disappears and they can finally come out into the streets, breathing again.

In the evenings, the asphalt and the buildings continue to radiate sweltering, unbearable heat. At night, no one can sleep: it gets too hot to breathe, to lie, you feel thirsty, but if you drink something, you start bursting with excess moisture, pouring sweat. The bed gets wet, everything sticks and it is impossible to fall asleep even in the early morning. Then the new day begins, and with it, a new round of the useless struggle with the heat.

The work is distracting, but body accumulates the internal tension and fatigue from insomnia. Everything becomes annoying. And only a strong wind that will come without failing and carries a cloud of sand and dust, can tame the heat for a little while and bring a short relief.

The winds are different in the desert, and they are blowing constantly. Even on a quiet, scorching day, when the air is viscous, like hot treacle, and motionless, and it seems that all living and non-living things fall into a lazy trance, every now and then a little mischievous gust of wind comes seemingly from nowhere.

It dances like a madman, squirms, jumps, and rushes everywhere, snatches small objects from hands, overturns everything that is unstable, splashes sand, laughs in your face, whistles, puffs, and zigzags away.

Often, larger whirlwinds – the sandstorms – come rushing along the streets. They move with certainty and are noticeable from anywhere in the city. Their prey is paper, pieces of plywood, fragments of foam, hanged or abandoned clothes. All of this gets sucked in a huge spinning whirl, rises rapidly up its narrow neck and is thrown high into the sky. The most striking are the rectangular paper sheets that swirl over houses, like a flock of hysterical ravens.

The winds, like street sweepers, eliminate garbage from the streets and spread it across a large area, so that even far outside the city you can see the scraps of some official papers in the sand, sheets torn from the school notebooks, letters and mailing box lids with the addresses of various cities and villages.

To be in the chaos of a raging sandstorm is unpleasant and terrifying: the whirlwind, like a devil, plays with a man in mean ways, painfully lashes with biting sandblasts from the sides, from above, from below, at random, relentlessly tortures your clothes and stuns you with loud hisses, squeaks, and squeals. The moments spent in the embrace of a whirlwind seem excruciatingly long, and the feel of being short of breath increases the fear.

Several times a year the desert gets shaken by storms. Their approach can be seen from afar: usually from the north, across the horizon, a towering black wall starts approaching the city, gets inevitably nearer and nearer, absorbing everything in its path. A tense silence reigns upon its path and you can clearly see the hundreds of small, protruding tornados «marching» in dense rows. Like a row of Roman legionaries, escaping from underground, they are striding confidently, without a fuss, united by one goal: to raise into the air and destroy houses built by man. And yet the hurricane hits the city unexpectedly, immediately trying to lift it into the air. In the beginning, you can hear the slamming of doors and the ringing of broken glass, then the rattle of roofs, the banging of broken slate, the whistling of wires and balcony grades, joined by the deep groans of houses, and finally, everything merges into a hellish roar and continuous rumble. The day gets replaced by twilight, which turns into night. The hurricane rages for hours, sometimes for days.

No matter how well the windows and doors are caulked and plugged, in the middle of the hurricane storm, the wind still discovers all the cracks and searches every part of the house up and down, filling it with the fine-grained sand. The sand gets everywhere: a dense sand veil hangs in the air, it lies in even layers on the floor, on furniture, on faces of sleeping people and covers the souls of those who are awake. Especially disgusting snowstorms come in winter, bringing with them the cold that invades houses and takes residence, reigning over people, despite the powerful heating. Every apartment at this time gets dirty, dusty and uncomfortable. When the storm subsides, there comes a short period of stunning purity and calmness in the air. And this is not a deceptive perception caused by the contrast between the lingering noise and the long-hoped-for silence – not at all, the eye is pleased with the high dark blue sky, the colorful horizon with the predominance of yellowish tones up close and the violet ones in the distance, and with the transparent air, electrified by the already fading lighting strokes. Unfortunately, the sky soon becomes opaque, the horizon gets gray, and the tornadoes rise up in the air again, with moving clouds of dust that bite your nose. The desert returns into its usual state.

* * *

Today’s sandstorm was unlike any other: it brought a rain that began late at night, when almost everybody was already asleep, and ended in the morning when almost everyone had not woken up yet. Maya woke up suddenly because of the deathly silence, coolness and a feeling of impending joy. Sometimes she managed to escape the heat and rest in the maternity ward like this, thanks to the only operating air conditioner in the entire hospital. But to sleep in your own apartment is way better indeed!

Discovering a thin layer of dry soft dust everywhere, she did not feel upset, like she used to. On the contrary, the perspective of upcoming housecleaning seemed pleasant. She brightened up, and asked herself: «Do you want to marry Klyuchitsky?» – and in the next breath she realized the absurdity of the question, and laughed loudly and decided that she feels so good today due to the wonderful weather, because the nature has brought the time when she will live in the Mainland a step closer, the time, when she will have her own apartment, furnished with her own furniture.

When Maya came out into the street, she saw a couple of small puddles and immediately imagined how she’d pass over the wide streams of muddy water in the spring flood season, merging into the majestic rivers filling up the vast seas. Suddenly she felt like she was already living there, in that bright future, while what was happening now, was in fact just a fleeting reminiscence of this hot desert and all the things that happened to her while she was here.