CHAPTER 6

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From Marfa, Turgen learned what his neighbors thought of him and said of him. Although he cared, he was a proud man and did not think it necessary to justify his actions to anyone. Furthermore, he was discovering that solitude can be a very pleasant thing. Now that visitors no longer came with their trifling requests, he had time to enjoy his small kingdom. Here he had lived all his life and he loved it--the mountains with their strange enchantment, the brook, the lake, the forest, the simple yurta. And always there was with him the memory of the wife and son his love and knowledge had not been able to save though he tried every art at his command. The flowers he had planted on their grave bloomed each summer and beckoned him on warm days to sit there on his bench with his pipe for company.

Turgen was one of those lean, muscular men to whom the years are kind. His coppery skin, so free of hair, was finely wrinkled under the narrow, kindly eyes, deepset beneath bushy brows. His gray hair grew in untidy rows like a neglected field. But his hands kept their firmness, his eyes their sharpness, his feet the spring of youth. How old was he? Impossible to say, for he had stopped reckoning the years when he reached fifty. “Why count the winters?” he asked himself. “You live through them, and thank God. For whom is it necessary to know?”

In short, Turgen looked like what he was--a kindly man, built to endure the life of a hunter and fisherman. In both these pursuits he was very skillful. And he was not poor, though many considered him so because he owned neither horses nor cows. No one is really poor who can have food for the taking, and Turgen had besides valuable pelts which were ready exchange for cartridges, yarn for nets, barley meal, salt, and other provisions supplied by a merchant who called once a month. Kamov was the merchant’s name. His visits gave Turgen much pleasure, for he brought news of the world and was always ready for a friendly chat.

What he got from the merchant Turgen shared with Marfa and her children. It was a holiday for him just to sit in her yurta sipping tea and saying nothing. To Marfa he had little to talk about, but with the children he talked freely of many things--mostly of the life around them, and of his boyhood. When the children, full of curiosity, wanted to know more and more, and questioned him about other marvels he knew, he told them tales to make their eyes grow big--tales of the great warrior Tugan and his son Chaal, a famous athlete; stories of the animals and fish who inhabited the tundra; legends explaining the sun and moon and stars. The sun, it seemed, was servant to the Great Spirit, a powerful warrior clothed in armor of precious stones and wearing a crown of fire. The moon was his sister and one of her duties was to guard the stars, those eyes of countless angels, to make sure they did not go out and plunge the world into darkness.

Yes, Turgen knew everything.

These evenings were rare. In winter he did not call for his milk oftener than twice a month but spent the long evenings weaving his nets or smoking his pipe while he stared into the fire and reflected on the odd turns that life takes, on the joys that he knew in the peace of his mountains. Or if the solitude became a burden, he would take down from a shelf a reed he had carved long ago from a willow tree. And placing it to his lips he would bring forth a sweet, sad melody that would express thoughts impossible to put in words.

After that he would lie down to sleep like a marmot, covered snugly under two blankets made of the skins of rabbits and wolves. If he was fortunate, he would be carried off in dreams to another and happier life. What he liked best was to dream of his wife and son, to re-live the fine times they had together. But to his regret nice dreams were few, the winters long and stern.

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