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.
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