"The One" by Alexei Borodkin

I'm not an author. I'm just a translator from Russian.

Illustration is here https://invir-lazarev.livejournal.com/2058.html

Part I. The Hermit
А wolf howled at night for the third or fourth night in a row. He did not howled neither loudly and nor pitifully, but somehow ... consistently, as if he were speaking or telling someone something. The wolf howled with long pauses in between, with intonations and sometimes even with excitement.
Why would he want to do that of all of these things? After all, it was a moonless night.

In the morning the wolf appeared: he trotted past the hut and sniffed up the air through its nostrils. Mikhail watched him. The wolf knew that he was watching him and the man knew that the wolf knew. The wolf chose a place and lay down behind a shed next to a log store. He put one paw over the other and froze like the Sphinx. Mikhail opened the little dorm window carefully so as not to make a sound. He stuck out his gun through the window and took aim.
Mikhail realized that for the first time in his life he was shooting at a living creature. He also thought that from such a distance he wouldn’t miss; the shot would shatter the wolf into pieces.
The wolf was old. His hair no longer shimmered and he had gray marks on his sides. The wolf could smell the gun oil, but did not run away. He didn’t even turn his head, he only shrank his head into his shoulders just like a human.
The situation was strange, unusual. A moment later, Mikhail realized: “It's what he's here for.”
He lowered his gun.
"Well, this is great! He decided to commit suicide with my help, this piece of shit. I wonder what the punishment would be for wolves-suiciders on the other side?"
There were leftovers from his previous day's dinner in the pot. Mikhail got a bone with cartilage from the pot, then went out onto the porch and threw it onto the ground. At first, the wolf lay motionless, but then stood up. He nibbled the bone and licked himself. Perhaps he was kicked out of his own pack or maybe he left on his own choice. Probably the wolf felt the ravages of age and left, because he did not want to become a burden.
“It's really nice,” Michael looked into the pot once again. “But you're responsible for what you have tamed. For tomorrow, I suppose, I can leave him a can of stew ... and then what?"

There are seven relay stations located every twenty to twenty-five kilometers of each other between the coastline and the mountain range. Mikhail looked after them - he worked as a maintenance man. According to the regulations, he was supposed to inspect each tower every twelve days for damage and write in a logbook the findings of the inspection, but in practice: “What can happen to them? They are made of iron. They just stand and work”, he thought.
Mikhail spent about a week with each relay tower and then moved on to the next. This technique had its advantages: in a week he had enough time to carefully examine all the equipment. Possible failures were eliminated before they appeared. It was a rotating shift. The standard shift lasted six months. When his first shift was coming to an end, Mikhail was asked to stay, because his colleague's wife was about to give birth. Mikhail agreed to stay on the second shift. Then on the third, fourth … willingly. The girls in HR called him “The Snowman”.
“Why the Snowman?” Mikhail asked surprisingly sad with some resentment when he learned of his nickname. “Snow is high in the mountains, but, anyway, what do they know about that place?”.

After breakfast, he spent a long time drinking tea; for this, he specifically lit fire in the oven, boiled water in a kettle and lamented the fact that much of the heated water would go to waste. The kettle was too big for one person- for two it would be just right. He did not pour out the remaining water, leaving the kettle on the stove.
During his first shift, he used to make little “beacons”: he placed the kettle with its spout directly against the window, laid a log parallel to the floor boards, or rigged the door with some thread. He wanted to know whether anyone had come in while he was gone. "Someone's been sitting in my chair and they've broken it to pieces! Someone's been eating my porridge and they ate it all up!" This game of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” quickly bothered him: no one had come, no one was eating or lying down. There was nobody to come and nobody to sit and eat.
Sometimes he drove to the city for groceries and kerosene. Parcels with spare parts were delivered to the city as well (if required). From the post office he went to the market and bought greens and tomatoes there. No one spoke English here; the locals pretended not to understand Russian, but Mikhail knew when they understood him. Their faces betrayed them. The faces of the merchants began to change when Mikhail offered too low a price or, conversely, bought something without bargaining. Paying too much was considered a weakness here, and any weakness was despised and had to be punished.

On the seventeenth of each month, he went to the bank and received an account statement indicating that they had transferred his salary. The amount of money in his account increased every time, which pleased him. There was a feeling of correctness and order and it all seemed like it was meant to be. He was working, money was accumulating and there were more opportunities.
"For example, I can buy a car and go to the sea on vacation. By the sea, by the blue sea ..." After this thought, he always smiled. The sea - here it is, close by and you don’t need to go anywhere.
Sometimes he had major life plans: to buy an apartment in a big city and move there. "Bright lights, restaurants, shopping centers ... you can go to the cinema." Such fantasies often appeared to him at twilight, when the sun was no longer there and there was only a scarlet strip between today and tomorrow, between past and future. He was anxious to look there, over the horizon, the next day.
"I could meet a girl. I don't want to be stuck here with these relay stations forever.”
These thoughts about girls affected him; he felt a pleasant and restless longing in his middle. Mikhail imagined dancing a waltz with a beautiful girl, spinning around in a sparkling hall. "You don’t know how to dance!" his inner voice grinned. "I’ll learn! My legs are not crooked… But then you have to live without the sea (which is so nice to dive into in the morning), the majestic mountain peaks, the fire ... the morning winter frost, which climbs under the covers and tickles you and the spring water… And then, what will I do with her? What should I talk about? About microcircuit chips? You will need to talk to her ... to drive her to the shops."
Sometimes when his loneliness got rough, Mikhail went to "Paradise" - that was the name of a place near the mountain pass. A footpath at this point meandered into a loop and became narrow, so you could barely see it. Passing the turn, the traveler found himself on a patch, a small platform under an overhanging ledge. The right time to come here was the early morning in cloudy weather when fog, moved in from the sea and covered most of the coastal strip. Mikhail used to lay down on the stones, close his eyes and clear his mind. There was only the sky without beginning or end, the little rocky platform, the greyish-white fog and the blue of the sea - in the distance, all the way out to the horizon. After some time, the thoughts in his head stopped and there was a feeling that he was alone in the universe and that this piece of rock had come off the mother-mountain and was silently gliding over the lonely planet. "I am God!" he wanted to yell at the top of his lungs.

Next on the schedule there was a tower numbered 241/3 bis. Matilda. Mikhail called this tower Matilda for her arrogant nature - she kept all her problems secret until the last minute. “Be careful, Matilda, the dog may not be sterile,” he remembered Miss Bock's phrase from the Soviet cartoon. It referred to her cat, Matilda (1). The housekeeper Miss Bock invaded a respectable family's space; Carlson helped the Kid.
Autumn came early that year; from the very first days it became clear that there would be no indulgence in the form of an Indian summer. It became cold and damp. It was annoyingly drizzly all day long. Thunder rumbled in the distance, the brightest and most powerful lightning strikes were seen. It seemed like someone turned on the light and the light bulb burned out.
The cabin at the base of a relay station was very small: the room was five to six steps on the diagonal and the hallway was half a step. "Who came up with the idea of making such a small entrance? It would be better if they made a canopy instead."
The room had only a bed, a table and a stove. The little window was cut in the western wall, especially so that the tower could be seen.
Around the tower was a huge meadow. The grass turned green after it rained; it was in a hurry to absorb the last autumn warmth.
It was boring for Mikhail to walk in this meadow and he went to the mountains, however, walking that wasn’t any fun either - every five minutes he had to clean his boots of dirt. The soil became muddy and the path became slimy and dangerous.
For entertainment he only had music. As a child, Mikhail studied at a music school. Although he finished the trumpet course, but he did not become a musician; it did not work out. The trumpet "ascended" onto the shelf, among a bunch of other useless things. Mikhail remembered this only when he was going to his first shift. He took his trumpet with him just in case.
Now Mikhail was lying on the bed, dangling his dirty boots off its edge, watching as water dripped from the metal beams of the tower and blowing his trumpet. He didn’t play any actual music. He just blew the trumpet, holding one long note, as long as he had enough breath; then he grabbed some air and took it down an octave and again pressed this note endlessly. This kind of music made him feell bad inside, feell that life was pretty shitty, but this was his intention.
He thought he needed to stock up on some more firewood. "”If it’s going to be a chilly winter here, I will freeze to death. It wouldn’t be a sin to patch the roof and the glass in the window rattles from the wind, like in an old tram ...”
All these matters could be postponed, or could be completely ignored.
"Damn it! Last year I did not die, I will survive this winter too."
He was becoming melancholicly obscure.
”Maybe they’ll find me in six months, or maybe they will not find me at all ...” And the young bride will never know what became of the tank crewman (2),” he said out loud and suddenly thought of the wolf.
“How is he doing? I bet the poor fellow is starving there.”

2- https://www.ooltra.net/Lyrics.php?a=Various&s=NaPolyeTankiGrokhotali&l=ru

The noise outside had changed. Was there some rustling in addition to the monotonous murmur of rain, or was it someone's footfall? It seemed to him that he heard sheep bleating and pebbles crunching. Mikhail listened. Someone shouted at Mikhail’s cabin: "Oush! Oush!" and then whistled. Mikhail gave a start of surprise and jumped onto his bed. “Oush, I tell you! Oh, you damn brainless little monsters,” the person was yelling outside the door. “Oush! Oush!”
Mikhail looked out the door and froze - he was in the middle of a living woollen lake, in the midst of flock of sheep. The sheep bleated, milled about, moved slowly; the woollen lake was rising, waves were going over it. A thin tall shepherd shook his staff and tried to direct the animal flow.
“Take it easy! Oush, I tell you!” he sounded kind-of nervous; it was obvious that his sheep disobeyed him. "What the ...” Mikhail wanted to swear loudly. “Where did this scarecrow come from?"
There was a security zone around the relay tower, a restricted area - the sign says so in Russian and in English. Moreover, there were striped pegs which should have warned people to keep away.
“What are you whining about?” Mikhail asked rudely.
The shepherd dropped his staff, then quickly picked it up and turned to Mikhail.
Horror flickered in his gaze, as if a ghost had materialized before him.
“Who are you? Didn’t you know that someone lives here? Are you not an escaped convict? Look, I have a rifle!” the shepherd chattered. He stepped back and put forward his stick.
"Is it in your pocket?" Mikhail asked sarcastically.
“In ... in .. I have my rifle there," the shepherd could not think of a good lie and waved his hand toward the mountains.
“Well, there you go.”
That's how the Drifter came to be.

Part II. The Drifter

He was tall and thin man. He had a long horsey face, with an expression of surprise frozen on it, as if the horse had seen something unusual and was thinking it over for a moment.
The drifter wore a huge shaggy hat, and as he took it off, it turned out the hair underneath was curly, black, and half-gray. When coal is mixed with whitewash, it turns out exactly that kind of shade.
"I'm halfway through my life," the drifter said. "Someone could say that I am half white, another - that I’m half black, just like the saying about a glass beeng half empty or half full."
Mikhail asked the shepherd how old he was. Karim Borisovich (that was the name of the shepherd) replied that he was sixty-something. "Wow," thought Mikhail. "A young boy in a funny cap. How long are you going to live, now that you've got half way?"
"Are you a shepherd?"
The drifter answered with a question: "Does it look like I am?"
"Not really."
In the past, Karim Borisovich had studied foreign poetry. He had been the head of the foreign poetry department and taught students at the university in Bukhara.
“I even had a girlfriend, can you imagine?”, the drifter said it as if having a girlfriend was equivalent to owning a miniature space shuttle. "Then I changed my career to become a shepherd.”
"For what?"Mikhail asked.
“The right question is not 'for what?' but 'why?', the drifter raised his index finger up.“I think it's because I generally don't like people,”
Mikhail nodded in understanding.
“When I realized this, staying at the university no longer made sense. I picked up the shepherd’s staff and walked away.”
"Why were you yelling at the sheep in Turkmen?"
"A Turkmen taught me how to manage sheep.”
"He doesn't look like an unsociable person," thought Mikhail. "He is too talkative. But ... the devil knows him."
Mikhail asked Karim:
"Where are you going now?"
"I’ll stay here with the sheep for several days, as long as there is food for them, and then we will go further along the coast."
"And then?"
"Then we will go further, through the pass, into the valley. There is a lambing barn."
Karim stayed at the campfire all night; he sat there in the darkness. He was either repairing clothes, reading something, or just staring into the fire. Karim leaned toward the very coals, like a doll that had fallen to one side, exposing the page of the book to the crimson heat of the fire. Mikhail watched him without being noticed. Finally, Karim yawned, wrapped himself in a blanket and fell asleep.
Mikhail invited him to his cabin, but the shepherd refused, said he did not want to get used to comfort. "Yesterday you were not there and tomorrow you will not be. Why should I change my habits?"
“As you wish,” Mikhail answered indifferently. He wanted to warn the shepherd about the threat of rain, but looked up to the sky and saw only stars. The sky cleared for the first time in recent weeks; the dark air space became cold, arrogant and big. So you felt like you couldn’t reach it.
Towards morning the grass became a bit frozen and turned into green-white, brittle crystals. There was a dark trace behind the sheep, as if an icebreaker had passed through the grass.

As soon as the sun rose, Karim knocked on the door of the cabin, waited a couple of seconds, popped his head in and asked Mikhail: “Do you have any wine?”
"What?" being half-awake Mikhail thought that there was some kind of trouble, he jumped up and began to pull on his trousers. "What wine?"
"Red or white, but strong fortified wine would be better.”
Karim Borisovich looked at Mikhail with hope. Mikhail cursed and sat down on his bed. His pants were half way on.
"I have no wine. None at all," Mikhail scratched at the back of his head. "Not even sweet wine. And what happened?"
Karim rubbed his eyes with his fists. He had recently woken up and had not yet washed his face.
"I’m going to slaughter a lamb in the evening. I thought ... it would be nice just to have a hello drink. "
"Ahhh ..."
"It’s a pity that you have no wine ... but all right. Anyway, come without wine."
Mikhail finally put on his pants and put his feet in his boots: " But I have rubbing alcohol. Would it be okay?"
“Is this, like, denatured alcohol?”
"No, medical pure alcohol."
"Well, why didn't you say so, you weird guy? It's even better."
In the evening they ate the lamb and drank alcohol diluted with spring water. Mikhail had a stash with a huge bluish onion, a bunch of green parsley and a can of peaches.
"It’s too bad that I ran out of tomatoes," Mikhail said apologizing. "I have been out of the city for a long time."
"Do you have a car?"
“Yes,” Mikhail replied. “Jeep. It's at the first tower.”
"Why don't you drive?"
"I don't like this car because of its bad character."
Mikhail watched in surprise as Karim put his hand into a pile of meat, grabbed hot pieces and then licked his fingers.
"We are alone at the very end of the world. It’s creepy and beautiful at the same time, but it’s very exciting too. So let's enjoy our privileges." The shepherd spread his arms open wide, as if he was about to embrace the planet.
“He's a nice old man,” Mikhail thought. "And not as simple as he seems."
"Why did you leave university?"
"Didn't I say? I hate people." The shepherd's little eyes grew round, so they looked like nail heads.
Karim’s hat was crooked on his head and his eyes glittered. He looked like a hedge-creeper from " Arabian Nights".
"Why don't you love them so much?"
"They ruin everything."
Mikhail spread a blanket, laid down and put his hands behind his head. The sky above him was stretching out to infinity. Somewhere there at the highest point, the sky was frightened by its own movement and descended to the earth as clouds.
"You have to feel sorry for them."
"I do. I feel sorry for them and I hate them at the same time."
The flock of sheep was divided into separate groups; the sheep formed "stars" – with their heads towards the center and their backs sticking out.
Karim ate another piece of meat, hiccuped loudly and went to the stream for water, singing something in a soft voice.
“A happy man,” Mikhail thought. "He has no worries or troubles. He is free like the wind." A voice within Mikhail asked, what was stopping him from feeling free?
"I have a job, a responsibility."
Karim returned and set the kettle on the coals.
They drank tea in silence. Their drunkenness was almost gone, leaving behind a slight weakness in the muscles and a velvet mist in the head.
Karim poured the rest of the tea into the cups and shook the tea leaves out. Mikhail thought that the shepherd’s kettle was the same as his. It was just right for two people.
“I did not ask, but what do you do”
“I service relay towers”
"How long have you been doing this?"
“For nearly three years.”
"It is strange that we’ve not met before, isn’t it."
"Yes, it is."
“You know, it's weird how life works.”
In the morning a dense fog came from the sea, so you couldn't even see 10 feet away. Sad sheep seemed to swim slowly in this white mist that was as thick as jelly. The shepherd went around the flock, counted the sheep and realized that three sheep were missing. They would need to be found. Mikhail offered to help.
It was decided to go around the meadow in opposite directions, and meet at the far side.
“You shout loudly, "Agdaras", and the sheep gather together,” the shepherd said.
The missing sheep were found by the stream. They had followed the shallow stream bed up a hill and were afraid to go down in the fog.
On the way back, Karim sang. At first, he just hummed a melody, but soon a song flowed loudly. Mikhail ran to the cabin and grabbed his trumpet. He listened for a while, then he joined the shepherd's song. The trumpet was supported the shepherd's voice. It was not an accompanied song. It was exactly a duet of human voice and trumpet. And it was not clear who dominated this duet. But that was not important. For another week the flock grazed at the Matilda tower and Mikhail remained there too.
When they had finished grazing in the meadow, the shepherd led the flock to the next pasture. Mikhail decided to go with his friend. It was at that moment that he first thought of Karim as his friend. Mikhail realized that he did not want to be apart from the shepherd. He told Karim that where he was heading, there was a wolf at the next tower where he was heading. "It's dangerous. It's better if I go with you." Mikhail did not say that the wolf was old and weak. Karim pretended that he did not care, but the warmth appeared in his gaze, and you could see that he was touched.
They walked slowly, talked a lot and argued. They discussed poems (since Karim knew a great many of them) and questions about the universe. They talked about God and about life, about how complicated everything is but at the same time how the world runs on logic.
“We can ask a thousand people, and each of them will say that he is not happy with his life,” Karim reasoned. The topic excited him. He spoke loudly and gestured.
“You mean, seriously, are all of them unhappy?”
"Absolutely! This is a property of the human soul: even if everything is there, something is missing. So, if you say to these people: think for yourself, people. Consider what you would need to do to make yourself happy. Go for it! And so what? No one will come up with anything! I assure you, man. To arrange everything as cleverly as has already been arranged in the world, no one can do it! No mortal can do it. That's a task for God. Just imagine the diversity. One person goes there and another here. This person wants one thing, and another wants the opposite. This one has a backache, and the other’s wife is giving birth. This person is in a hurry, and the other is sleeping. But somehow despite this incredible tangle, everything somehow exists. People somehow get along with each other and are sometimes even happy."
Mikhail was silent. He thought that it was why he lived here, between the sea and the rocks, so as not to get into the "nest of vipers” of human community.
"In diversity is the essence of Nature," Karim said.
“An interesting finding. Then tell me ...” Mikhail frowned. He frowned every time, that he was trying to make himself understood. "Here is our universe - an infinite number of worlds. Right?" Karim nodded in response. "Among them, no doubt, there are viable planets - just the same as our Earth. On these planets there are sentient beings." Karim agreed with this. "But these sentient beings are not necessarily like us!" This thought seemed to Mikhail grandiose and overwhelming, but Karim only calmly nodded.
“And what is tripping you up.”
"Well, how can it be? They can be creatures without arms, but with fins, they can be giants or dwarfs. They may have a completely different morality. They may not have morality at all, like earth spiders or ... or gulls!
"It may well be. So what?"
"But our god does not suit them!"
Karim thought only for a moment: "So they have their own."
"But how so? God created the world! There's only One!"
"A grayhaired old man in a white rags with a pointed beard and a staff in his hands?" a mischievous twinkle fell in Karim's eye. "God is what allows the World to be and nothing else. That's what I’m talking about.”
“Do you really think so?”
Mikhail brought the trumpet to his lips and played a melody quietly. Karim listened, waited for a spark to break out in his soul, and when he felt it, he began to sing. They were really great together.

Winter had arrived. One day Mikhail woke up and found a layer of snow on his blanket. Snow had fallen during the night, then, it had melted and turned into a slush. It was unpleasant, cold and damp. Mikhail invited Karim to return to the first relay tower and spend the winter in the cabin.
“There is enough space, a lot of firewood, potatoes and canned food.” He looked into Karim’s eyes. Not knowing how else to interest his friend, he lied, saying that he kept a bottle of alcohol there.
"The sheep will die up here," the shepherd answered.
"What?"
“The sheep will die up here,” Karim repeated, although he saw that his friend had heard him. "They need grass, warmth and water. Otherwise they will die. I will go to the valley and take them to the sheep shelter."
Mikhail was going to try to convince his friend to stay, but he did not. He understood that it was the right thing to do.

Part III. The Outsider
Mikhail expected that, left alone, he would begin to yearn for company, but this did not happen. At least, not the way he could have imagined. Karim was present nearby in an amazing way, as if he had remained, and had not left with his sheep flock. It was still possible to talk with him, ask questions, discuss things and ask his opinion ... but without receiving answers, of course. In these one-sided dialogs one could see a mental disorder, but the diagnosis would hardly be correct. Mikhail knew perfectly well that Karim was far away, that they would not meet soon ... if at all. He had no illusions. Still, it was wonderful to have a company, even only if imagined.
"He is an intellectual, a man of encyclopedic knowledge. It is interesting to talk with him. Better than talking with myself."
The wolf came as before and Mikhail fed him. "I wonder if the wolf can feel humiliation. If he can, has he come up with an excuse for his “free-riding”? A man would certainly come up with an excuse, legitimize himself and shift the responsibility to circumstances ... to fate. If the wolf could realize his weakness because of age, then he is developed enough for making moral decisions.”
Mikhail wrote this idea in his notebook so as not to forget it.
"A great topic for discussion when Karim gets back."

This winter passed more quickly than the previous winter. Mikhail started a jeep, checked its reliability and drove a few laps around the relay station before going to the city.
Now he moved from the tower to the tower on wheels. He wouldn’t stay long at the towers. He checked the equipment, made a journal entry, noted the necessary details in a notebook and drove to the next relay station. Most of the time he spent at the first tower, which was the closest to the pass.
He was waiting. He refused to admit it, but he was waiting for Karim. He had paid three times as much as usual for a bunch of fresh cilantro and several bottles of wine. He left one bottle of wine to make vinegar. “ I’ll have vinegar to marinate lamb meat and make a kind of Siberian sashimi.” (1)
1- Siberian sashimi (slices of frozen fish or meat served cold).
Karim didn't come alone.
He herded his sheep into the meadow, then sat opposite Mikhail’s cabin and laid his staff on his knees. A girl stood at some distance from him. A young woman. Mikhail came out and shook Karim's hand. He wanted to hug him, but did not dare to do this with an outsider present. Karim said that the girl’s name was Mufida and that they were now together. "Why together? What does he mean? Do they graze sheep together?" Mikhail ran his eyes over the girl’s shapely figure, but did not dare to ask his questions aloud.
Later that evening, after dinner, he asked Karim: "Who is she?"
"I bought her. I bought her very cheaply, can you imagine? She cost me five sheep. The merchant asked eight, but nobody would pay that much. I offered five and he agreed. I just had to give my favorite Rachel, remember, I had that sheep which always ran ahead of the flock? She had a white star on her forehead, remember?”
Mikhail did not remember. It seemed wild that you could buy a living person ... and so cheaply. "Five sheep were equal to one woman? It's creepy. She’s an adult ... She probably studied somewhere, lived somewhere ... She has parents, she can cook pilaf, she can give birth to a child ... And then she’s just sold for five sheep. This is real idiocy! "
The men sat in the cabin and drank wine. Mufida made a fire outside and cooked something; smoke rose up into the sky in rings. It smelled of meat and spices.
The fact that the girl had been sold as an object" gave her an amazing appeal. A vicious sex appeal.
"Her husband owed a large sum. He could not pay even after selling everything he owened - his house and household. This was not enough, so he sold his wife."
"What about his children?"
“There were no children,” Karim shook his head. "I would not buy her with children."
"And what happened to him?"
"He left this area, or maybe he just hanged himself. No one knows. Usually, after such shame, people disappear."
"I understand."
Mikhail wanted to ask who she was to him. What did he mean "together"? Was it a boss and worker relationship? Or was he her owner? Maybe they were husband and wife?
This was made clear soon enough.
One night Mikhail woke up and went out to the toilet. It was a beautiful night. There were so many stars out. Suddenly there was a little owl hooting somewhere. The squeak of a strangled mouse should have been heard next, but this did not happen. Mikhail took a closer look and realized that it was not an owl which made the sound. Two figures could be seen in the dim crimson light of the fire. Karim lay on the ground and Mufida was on top of him. She swayed her hips, threw her hands behind her head and fingered her hair in excitement.
It seemed to Mikhail that Karim turned and looked at him. However, this was just a guess.
“That's right,” Mikhail decided. "That is how it should be. Why am I surprised? A man has a woman ... what does it matter how it happened? Even if it feels like she just fell from the sky."

Before dawn, Mikhail packed up and drove to inspect the next tower. The rational side of Mikhail understood that there was nothing wrong with what had happened. “If you reflect soberly, the appearance of a woman is even a good thing.” Another part of Mikhail’s mind objected that this could damage his friendship with Karim, as any excess, an an outsider could be harmful.
"And why did I decide that she is an extra element? I don’t know anything about her. Perhaps she is the person Karim needed most for, his lifelong dream. I’m behaving like a little boy."
His hasty departure was, indeed, a walkout in protest. To smooth things over, Mikhail hastily inspected the tower and returned in the evening. He told a lie, saying that the receiver’s mirror was out of focus and it urgently needed to be fixed.
In general, things were the same: talking around the campfire until late at night, transitions from meadow to meadow, wine and tea from the kettle for two. But something had changed.
They began to quarrel. These were not differences in ideas-- this had happened before and was the beauty of the conversations -- to hear a different opinion, to try to convince the companion. They began to quarrel over small matters. The sideways glances, the suspicions, the misunderstood words. All these things created petty grievances, which were very painful.
"There is the terrible feeling of being the third wheel. It’s so distressing, unpleasant. I feel as if she is watching me." Mikhail wanted to ask if Karim had such feelings, but now it was impossible. "I don’t dare. She’s his woman." It was a taboo subject, and that was unpleasant too.

Mufida was a good cook and a good housekeeper. She was doing the laundry and mending.
By Karim’s order, she had mended shirts for Mikhail, cleaned the cabin, and also cleaned up the table. She worked very quickly and without hesitation. At the first it seemed to Mikhail that she lived like being half-asleep, under a transparent blanket, but over time, Mikhail had realized that this is not so. It was her eyes that gave her away. She was cute and even beautiful. She had a slender figure, rounded hips,was bust,and had gorgeous hair and lovely eyes. She hid her eyes, avoiding eye- to- eye contact, but once Mikhail was able to look into her soul. Her dark, huge, almost black eyes had no bottom, like a well in the steppe. Mikhail looked into her eyes and felt dizzy, as if he would fly into this bottomless pit. He felt a chill. Mikhail winced and stepped back.
And there was one more thing that had happened. Once Mufida made a mistake, then Karim became angry with her. He was literally furious. He stamped his feet and shouted. He waved his staff. This scene made Mikhail laugh. It was the anger of a harmless old man who would not hurt a fly. Mufida was standing, keeping her head down and did not even try to defend or justify herself. In the end, Karim spat, threw the staff on the ground and shouted before his left: "You total loser!"
Mikhail went up to the girl and took her hand.
“He’s too tough on you.”
“Husband,” the young woman put a lot of thought into this only word. The master, the husband, then surrendering to her fate - all fit into this one word. And then Mikhail saw her eyes flashing. They flashed intensely, infernally; it was like a knife in his heart.
That evening, Mikhail had an argument with Karim. The reason was over the question, "which direction shoul we move forward to?" During spring, the pastures are rich, you can go in any direction. Both men, of course, understood what the real reason for their quarrel was.
In the morning, Karim called Mikhail and suggested:
"How about going downhill?"
Mikhail thought about taking the car,but remembered that there was little fuel left and that he would need to go to the gas station.
“You don't understand!” Karim flung up his hands in a child-like manner.
He pointed to the mountains. The top of one of the mountains and its slopes were still covered in snow.
"What about sledding? Have you ever gone sledding?"
Mikhail could have told Karim about Tobolsk, and about the ice slides, but he only asked: “But where will we get a sled?”
Karim nodded to the roof of the cabin. Mikhail understood his message. His friend's thoughts were not difficult to understand. After all,they were still friends.
They removed a sheet of iron from the roof, bent the front of it slightly to make it curl in,and attached poles for strength and two boards as seats. Then,they spent three hours dragging their construction - which was in fact damn heavy - up the hill. They were afraid to climb too high; the slope was too steep.
"Who will sit in front?"
Karim offered to flip a coin, but Mikhail volunteered to sit behind him.
Already seated,and ready to sled, Mikhail whispered to Karim, teasing him: "We should respect our elders!" Karim perked up, raised his eyebrows and ... laughed aloud.
Laughing and hooting, they flew on their handmade sled down the slope. Stones, which were sticking out from under the snow, flickered before their eyes and the wind whistled in their ears. The sheep looked around in surprise, momentarily ceasing to chew, and the bright sun seemed to be looking at them with disfavor. It was a few minutes of happiness.
Karim said that he would not have another go, the impressions being too vivid, "I was close to saying goodbye to my life three times in those few minutes!"
Mufida asked to sit in Karim’s place. Mikhail gave him a questioning look. Karim nodded in agreement.
The second time they were sledding down even faster. Mufida sat in front. At some point Mikhail lost sight of the surrounding details -- they merged into a single white,-blue,and gray canvas. He wrapped his arms around the young woman and snuggled up to her. He could feel her hair whipping down his cheeks and her smell ... the exciting, electrifying scent of a dreamy young woman. His pants suddenly became tight, and he blushed, feeling bad and awkward in Karim's presence. Mikhail ejaculated before the sled stopped.
Mikhail needed a ride to the city. He said that he would buy, as usual, greens and asked if anything else was needed. Karim replied that this was a job for a woman and that Mufida should go with him. Then, he came up, shook Mikhail’s hand, and said a strange thing to him: "It feels like you need her. Do what you feel is right. Let it happen."
The entire ride, Mikhail was thinking about what Karim had said.
"What is the right thing to do? What do I need? The old man needs support, but I can handle myself. What could possibly happen? I don’t understand."
On their way back from the city, Mufida sat in the front seat next to him. Since it was unusual for him to see a woman's head in the rear view mirror, Mikhail asked her about it. He held out his hand, helped her sit down, and smelled her hair ... And then there was her gaze - those bottomless eyes which pierced him ... suddenly, he blacked out. When he regained consciousness, it was all over.
Mufida, smiling, put on her dress and examined the torn cloth. Mikhail felt a taste of blood from his bitten lip and an unusual emptiness in his groin. It was a blissful emptiness.
The moment Karim saw them, he exactly knew what had happened. He nodded his head, frowned in pseudo anger, and then smiled. "Life goes on," he told Mikhail. "The river will always find its way among the stones."

Since then, Mufida had been living with two men. She had not a guilty conscience. She did as her husband desired. Karim was still her husband, her conscience, her master and a symbol of her humility. But her body was starving for Mikhail.
The young were drawn to the young. It was a fact of life. For some time, this three seemed acceptable to each other. Everyone played a role. Karim was a noble old man, more like her father than her lover. Mikhail was her husband, Mufida was his wife.
“It was just circumstance.” Michael reasoned. "As fate would have it, he bought her, but I did not.”
Drops of water can pierce rocks, but time erases rocks and water… Time is the true Lord of the Universe. After some time, the "hypocrisy" of Karim was revealed to Mikhail.
Mufida shared the bed with Karim again that evening.
"After all, he knows that she prefers me ... knows this well, but he continues to do it." Mikhail imagined how the sheperd's old gnarled hands glided over her full breasts.
“Why can't he leave us alone? Why won't he just give her to me? Why does he act like a dog in a manger? Why does he want her? He just uses her to satisfy his lust. Does he not understand that it is disgusting to use a living person for his personal whims?”
Mikhail tried to understand the shepherd behavior.
“But why did I decide that he does not understand it? He is well aware of that!”
This revelation shocked Mikhail.
“He gets it and believes that this situation is right. He just uses her and… me. Yes, yes, every time during their intercourse, I feel like he’s raping me!"

Mikhail lost weight; he became harrowed, rancorous. Karim saw these changes, and understood the reasons behind them. Once he said to Mikhail: "I made a mistake, Misha. I'm telling you to back down. She’s not the kind of woman you need. You know nothing about her. Stop torturing yourself!"

Mikhail had lost control, and lashed out. He accused his friend of being senile, said that it was not for him to judge what kind of woman he needed. He yelled at Karim: “Now are you telling me what to do? You’re an old buffoon! You’re an animal! I love her! Yes! Believe it or not you old fool! And she loves me! And that's what counts! It is above all your arguments!"

Karim had gone with his sheep. Mufida went with them. Mikhail stayed. All day long he had been laying on the bed with his face down on a pillow.
“What if I kill him?” the thought was surprisingly clear. “Would it be evil? Would that be evil, with respect to the living human conscience? If two loving hearts were to destroy an obstacle between them, it would be ... a good deed! To save a person who is suffering from a splinter, is the doctor’s duty. What if the splinter is the size of… God, what the hell am I talking about? That would be murder! You can not eliminate the problem by being evil. It would just make it worse.”

After a few days, Mikhail convinced himself that it was the only way out. Convincing yourself is not difficult when your entire being desires something.
In the night delirium, Mikhail saw himself having sex with Mufida. He saw her husband appear during the heat of their intercourse - for some time, Mikhail avoided calling Karim by name. A knife pierced the old man’s chest and he breathed a weak sigh. His soul went up into the sky; the blood soaked the shepherd’s shirt and dripped to the ground. The picture was startling in its realism and Mikhail experienced terrible, chilling excitement.
"It is the gardener's job to rid the old tree of its dry bark. It is true. What if nature itself assigned me to rid the world of one extra person?"

The next day, Mikhail caught up to Karim’s flock. The shepherd was not leading his sheep to the next tower as usual; he was going in a different direction. Nevertheless, Mikhail found him by the tracks.
Everything happened so fast and even casually. Mikhail got out of his jeep and raised his gun. He thought that it would be a pity if Mufida saw him, but the old man said that he had sent his wife to the sea.
“Wife? She’s not your wife!”
Two barrels and buckshot. Mikhail thought that, for the first time in his life, he was shooting at a living creature. He also thought that from such a distance he wouldn’t miss and the buckshot would blow the shepherd to pieces.
“I assume there's no point in trying to convince you not to do it,” Karim said and had lowered his arms and kept his hands by his side. He was shivering. "And I, as your friend and the cause of trouble, cannot"
The barrels barked right-and-left shots, so much so that Karim did not even get to finish his sentence. Mikhail finished his sentence, "Do you consider yourself the reason for my meeting her? You pretentious idiot! Fate
has brought us together."

Part IV Epilogue
By the time Mufida returned, Mikhail had buried Karim's body, he had collected the clothing and pieces of flesh from the shepherd, and washed away his blood from the stones. Mikhail announced to the woman:
"I am the one who is your husband now."
Mufida looked into his scary white face and realized what had happened. She did not argue or object. She only asked him what would happen to the flock. Mikhail replied that he was going to take the sheep back to their pen. He didn't want to be a shepherd, and they would move to the city.

But Mikhail did not have a chance to drive the flock back.
One morning at dawn, at the holy time when prophetic dreams brew and the first early roosters begin to wake, he had a vision.
Mikhail had dreamed of an old man in white rags with a pointed beard and snow-white hair.
" How are you?" the old man asked him casually.
" I'm okay.Thanks," Mikhail answered. He suddenly felt light and flexible throughout his body, as if gravity no longer effected him.
"That's good." The old man sat down and placed his hands on his knee. "But I'm tired,"
"Why?" Mikhail asked him.
"I’ve been living for forty thousand years, that's why."
"All right."
They were silent for a while. Mikhail thought that now would be a good to die – he had peace in his heart. "What bliss! It just couldn't be better,"Mikhail thought.
"You yearned for company and I sent you a friend to stave off your loneliness,but you have killed him. What for? Did he make you feel bad?" asked the old man.
The world turned upside down and in an instant, all bliss disappeared. Mikhail remembered his lonely, longing, gray days. He remembered how Karim had appeared. He thought about their nights around the fire, their conversations, and the shepherd's wide smile and poems. "So that's what this man was!"Mikhail thought.
The sun appeared above the horizon and its first ray shone. The vision was gone. Mikhail got out of bed and got dressed. Mufida was doing housework; she was cooking something. She threw back her hair very beautifully- it flowed down her back like dark velvet.
“ You're responsible for what you have tamed,” came back to Mikhail. He put a couple of cans of stew, a loaf of bread and an onion bulb in his backpack. He then poured water into a flask. He handed the backpack to the woman.
"Go away. You are now free," Mikhail said.
He was afraid to look after her, but nevertheless he took one more glance.
She was divinely beautiful.

THE END


Translated into English by Invir Lazarev - 2021