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Chingiz Aitmatov

Jamila

Translated by Fainna Glagoleva

(The first pages)

Once again I find myself in front of the small painting in a simple frame. Tomorrow morning I leave for the village, and I gaze long and intently at the canvas, as if it can give me a word of advice for the journey ahead.

It has never been exhibited. Moreover, when relatives from home come to visit, I make sure it is out of sight. There is nothing to be ashamed of, though it is not really a work of art. It is as plain as the earth depicted in it.

The background is a patch of bleak autumn sky with the wind chasing fast-moving skewbald clouds over the far mountain range. The russet wormwood-covered steppe, a road black and damp from the recent rains, and the dry broken bushes of needle glass crowding at the roadside form the foreground. The footprints of two travellers follow a washed-out dirt road. Their tracks appear ever fainter as the road dwindles in the distance. It seems that if they were to take another step, they would disappear behind the frame. One of them.... However, I'm forestalling events.

It all happened when I was still a boy. It was the third year of war. Somewhere far away, at Kursk and Orel, our fathers and brothers battled the enemy, while we, lads of fifteen, worked on the collective farm. Our skinny young shoulders had to carry the full brunt of a grown man's job. Harvest time was the hardest of all. We were away from home for weeks on end, spending our days and nights in the field, at the threshing-floor, or on the road to the railway station, delivering the grain.

Driving my empty trap back from the station on one such scorching day, when our scythes seemed red-hot from reaping, I decided to stop off at home.

At the very end of the street, on a hillock near the ford, are two houses with a stout adobe wall around them and tall poplars growing beyond the wall. These are our houses. For many years our families have lived side by side. I was from the Big House. I had two brothers, both older than I, both bachelors, both away, at the front, and there had been no word from either for it long time.

My father was an old carpenter. After, saying his mourning prayer at dawn he went to work in the carpentry shop in the common yard, where he stayed till late in the evening. My mother and little sister remained at home.

Our close relatives lived in the neighbouring yard, known to the villagers as the Small House. Our great-grandfathers or great-great- grandfathers were brothers, but I call them close relatives because we lived as one family. It had been so since the time our people had been nomads, when our great-grandfathers used to break camp and round up their cattle together. We kept this tradition alive. When our village was collectivised, our, fathers built their houses side by side. Actually, we were all fellowtribesmen— the whole of Aralskaya Street, stretching the length of the village to the river, was inhabited by our kinsfolk.

Soon after we joined the collective farm, the master of the Small House died, leaving a widow and two small sons. According to the old custom of tribal law which was still adhered to in the village at the time, it was forbidden to let a widow who had sons leave the tribe, and it was therefore agreed that my father should marry her. His duty to the spirits of his ancestors compelled him to do this, for he was the deceased man's closest relative.

That is how we came to have a second family. The Small House was considered an independent household with its own grounds and its own cattle, but, actually, we lived together. The Small House had also sent two sons off to war. The eldest, Sadyk, had left soon after he married. We received letters from them, though they were few and far between.

Thus there remained in the Small House the mother, whom I called kichine — younger mother— and her daughter-in-law, Sadyk's wife. Both worked on the collective farm from morning till night. My younger mother was kind, complacent and mild-tempered; she kept up with the younger women in everything, be it in digging the irrigation ditches or in watering the fields. Fate had rewarded her with a hard-working daughter-in-law. Jamila was a good match for her mother-in-law; she was indefatigable and nimble, though of a very different temperament.

I loved Jamila dearly. And she loved me. We were great friends, yet we did not dare call each other by our first names. Had we been from different families, I would have certainly called her Jamila. However, since she was the wife of my eldest brother, I had to call her djene, while she, in turn, called me kichine bala — little boy— though I was far from little and there was a very small difference in our ages. Such was the custom of our villages: daughters-in-law called their husband's younger brothers kichine bala.