Читать книгу O’TKAN KUNLAR - Абдулла Кодирий - Страница 10

The serai already known to us slept peacefully as midnight descended. With a few turns of the key, Hasan Ali undid the lock to their room, entered, lit a candle, and waited for Otabek while spreading out his bedding. Yet, strangely, Otabek remained outside for some time and even when the door to their cell finally opened, Otabek still lingered in the doorway. He was deep in thought and oblivious to everything around him. Yet the door remained ajar as the welcoming candle burned bright and his mattress waited for him.

“I prepared your place for you, Bek.”

Barely stirred from his reverie by Hasan Ali’s intrusion, Otabek practically sleepwalked into the room, dropping down at the edge of his bed. Hasan Ali waited for the bek to change out of his clothes, since he wanted to take the now fully glowing candle to his own room. However, Otabek continued to sit on his bedding, his mind deep in some trance. To Hasan Ali’s watchful eyes, Otabek’s demeanor had changed over the past few days, with a strange mood lingering and controlling his every move. This state of affairs alarmed Hasan Ali. The bek seemed to have forgotten that he was among the living, taking no heed of people’s presence, as if preoccupied by some other interest. Hasan Ali had observed his melancholy from its initial glimmer to the present moment. At last, Hasan Ali became impatient with Otabek’s impenetrable dark mood.

“Do you have anything else for me to do?”

Otabek looked up at Hasan Ali’s face, not comprehending the question; his eyes were fixed at some point in the distance. His vacant stare only increased Hasan Ali’s anxiety. Hasan Ali did not understand Otabek’s condition. Otabek suddenly straightened, aware of the depth of his detachment at last, like a sleepwalker suddenly waking.

“Why aren’t you in bed yet?” he asked.

“Do you have anything else for me to do?” Hasan repeated.

“What work could I have for you at this hour? You may go and take the candle with you.”

Hasan Ali lifted the candleholder and made his way toward his room. His quarters were next to Otabek’s in order to protect their goods— fabric, footwear, and sundry other items were piled high on the floor. Hasan Ali spread out his things, silently saying to himself, “Tavba.”

Even if a faint awareness of Otabek’s mood swings had flickered at the edges of his consciousness, until now, he had not realized the severity of his present melancholy. His descent into a sort of torpor forced Hasan Ali to mull over a myriad reasons for the declining stability of his master’s son. Sitting on his bed, lost in thought, twisting his long white beard around his right hand, he considered the possibilities: “Maybe it’s financial troubles. He did not eat much at Ziyo Shohichi’s house, maybe it’s some foreign ailment… could he be sick…” Yet he arrived at no conclusion. Otabek was conscientious about his finances; he never hid them from Hasan Ali. And he would hear complaints from Otabek if he had taken ill.

A multitude of potential disasters spiraled in his mind, obscuring any hope for an explanation or a solution; at last he stood and extinguished the candle that shone in its niche. In the ensuing darkness, he knew neither right nor left, only the pitch black. Feeling his way toward his door, he eased it open as silently as he could and stuck out his head to look about the serai.

Confident no one was around, he crept outside in his soft leather boots and approached Otabek’s room, looking around the compound to make sure he was still alone.

Only the sound of horses chewing on hay in their stables and the crow of distant roosters disturbed the tranquility of the slumbering encampment. Hasan Ali lay down beneath the small window of Otabek’s room, listening in on its occupant. He heard nothing. Three or four minutes of stillness led Hasan Ali to believe nothing was amiss. As he began to stand up, a heavy sigh broke from the room—“Ouf!”

Hasan Ali shot straight up, pricking his ears, eyes widening and darting about as the strange sigh from Otabek’s room echoed in his head. He could only conclude that Otabek was ill. Determined to aid the bek, he grasped the door handle. He was about to open the door and rush to Otabek’s bedside, but he stilled his hand – doubting now whether Otabek was indeed ill. At last, he left off debating whether or not he should disturb Otabek’s peace and returned to his quarters. But his concern for Otabek increased tenfold. Though he disrobed and lay down to sleep, he could not close his eyes. He pored over the various symptoms of the bek’s illness. Before their travels, Yusufbek Hajji had commanded him, “My son is young. Throughout your lifetime, you have experienced the hot and cold of the world. You are also my confidant. Your duty is to mind my son’s every step.” Otabek’s mother, Uzbek Oyim, had entreated him with tears in her eyes, saying, “I entrust Otabek to you, and I entrust you to God.” These enjoinders rang in his ears. His sleeplessness persisted. Wearing only a long shirt, Hasan Ali again put on his robe, left his room, and resumed his position outside Otabek’s small window, standing guard under it.

A cold snap came on that night, with a bitter wind blowing from all four points, wracking Hasan Ali’s body as he sat, half- naked and shivering, by the doorway in the arms of the cold. Yet he managed to brush it aside by surrendering his body to its severity and sending his good thoughts to Otabek’s room. He continued to eavesdrop on the room for a long time. Eventually he took a long breath and moved his head away from the crack in the door. Otabek’s steady breathing had satisfied his fears. Although he felt immediate danger to his charge had been averted, he remained still. He remained still and sat there, quivering in the cold. Some time passed before Hasan Ali finally calmed down and began to wish for his warm bed. At that moment, he heard from the interior of the room a sleepy voice: “Black eyes, brows like bent bows.”

“What?” Hasan Ali exclaimed, again putting his ear to the cracked door. Now his entire body became as one ear as he lost himself entirely and focused all his attention on the inside of the room. A few moments passed and then the same voice, talking in its sleep: “Face is like a moon, smiling up at me, and then running, startled… off…”

Hasan Ali now knew what he couldn’t discern the first time; in this second instance, he had discovered the root of the matter. Hasan Ali decided that further observation would be unnecessary. He got up and went back to his room, shaking his head. “Bek is in love.”

He put his robe on his bed; he lay down under his blankets and asked, from deep within his heart, “Really, truly, is he in love?” Whose daughter could he have met in the course of five or six days in this unfamiliar city? Where could he have met her? Even as he drifted off to sleep, Hasan Ali continued thinking: With whom could he have fallen in love? So wholeheartedly, haunted by her even in his dreams? Thinking about it in terms of Otabek’s previous disinterest in women, he could not believe that Bek was in love. But on the other hand, there were those words from Bek’s own lips, “Face is like a moon, smiling up at me, and then running, startled,” repeating themselves over and over. There could be no other interpretation of Otabek’s melancholia in the past few days than the rapture of love! Hasan Ali debated both sides of the dilemma with himself, weighing the different aspects. Though he couldn’t believe it, the words “smiling up at me… running, startled” still reverberated in his ears.

As night turned to morning, his sleepy brain could not resolve this puzzle and, as he drifted off to sleep, he decided that tomorrow he would test Otabek to verify that he was, in fact, in love.