NAPSA

The old woman is dancing. Graceful dance of a Caucasian woman. Her body is light, like an autumn leaf that has fallen from a tree and plays with the breeze in the September garden. But her long, floor-length dress is covered with countless patches; they make the dress heavy, holding the dancer to the ground. If this weight had not hung on her, she would have long since flown into the sky and been lost as a light fluff in its endless space. The old woman's feet are bare, dry, dark brown, as if carved from the cracked wood of strong Kazakhstan elm. They have been like this for thirteen years, since they were forced to leave their home. The old woman has no face: instead there is a small ball of wrinkles, about the size of a child’s fist, woven and tied into a knot on her chin. The eyes are completely invisible; they have fallen into two small bottomless slits. Nobody knows how old she is. She doesn't remember this herself. She is probably ninety years old, but maybe a hundred, and what good, all two hundred... In the old woman’s hands is a large, old, round, like the full moon, tekkh - a Chechen wooden tray on which dough was kneaded, and then they put food in, she took him with her when they were driving him away from her native village, she grabbed him at the last minute, escaping from the soldier’s hands...

The wood is already cracked in many places, and the old linden vessel is visible through. Dancing, the old woman presses the tray with both hands to her chest, which is as withered as this tree. Then, holding it with one hand, she spins it around with her in a dance, presses it to her heart again, strokes it with her hands, caresses it with the words: “You and I are going home! Home, where we came from - you are from a tree, and I am from a mother...” She joyfully turns sing these words, and spin to this melody, spin...

The people, who thirteen years after the deportation were allowed to return to their homeland, having sold or abandoned the houses built here, the livestock raised and everything else, gathered near the railway. Having piled all their belongings along its rails, people turned the railway tracks into endlessly long trenches and waited day and night for the freight cars in which all these people were brought here to set on the day when the sun set on their simple happiness - to live on the land of the fathers... Along the sleepers, along the bottom of narrow trenches between the hills of bundles and suitcases, the old woman carried on her dance with the old tech.

- That's enough for you, Napsa, come here... Sit down, rest... “Eh, miserable one... Calm down, creation of God,” people call out to her as she floats past.
- We are coming home! Do-my-oh-oh-oh! – she laughs in response, without stopping...

Some said that she went crazy when she was brought to Kazakhstan and thrown into the snow, others said that this happened to her when her grandchildren did not return from the war...

Her husband and two sons died on the same day in a battle with Denikin’s troops, who attacked their village for refusing to hand over to the Russian Bolsheviks, who asked to hide them after escaping from Grozny, which had been captured by the whites. The village, according to the mountain custom of hospitality, received the fugitives and could never hand them over for execution...

When her sons died, Napsa sent their wives and daughters-in-law out of the yard, saying that they were still young and needed to find other husbands. She raised four grandchildren herself. Over time, the daughters-in-law actually got married and started new families... In forty-two, when rumors spread that the fierce German was already close to the mountain land, Napsa lined up her grandchildren in two lines, took them to the military registration and enlistment office and handed them over to one big boss, who, as she believed, was friends with Stalin himself. The boss advised her to leave one grandson at home so that he could help her. Napsa left without even answering his advice. Her grandchildren took the oath in Grozny - the gazavat was waiting for them, they were going to a sacred battle with the enemy. They left and never returned...

As Napsa was barefoot in the house, she was grabbed by a soldier in 1944, a guy in the same uniform in which her grandchildren went to the front. He commanded: “Get in, witch!”, and pushed him into a crumpled green Studebaker. She was wearing the same dress, only there have been a lot of patches on it since then, and then it was light, made of blue satin. Napsa barely had time to take with her the only good thing - the equipment given to her by her grandmother when she got married and started her own hearth... When the time came, Napsa was also supposed to give it to her granddaughter, but she didn’t have a granddaughter, and she said that she would give it to her granddaughter. tekh to the bride of her youngest grandson... Until Kazakhstan she did not utter a word. Along the way, compassionate people offered her shoes, but she refused...

In March forty-four, on the club square of the Kazakh village Chushkala Napsa began her barefoot dance...

The inhabitants of the village poured out in a crowd to look at the “abreks” who were brought from the Caucasus. But the “bandits” looked pitiful and not at all exotic. They were mostly stunned women and children, perplexed old men and despondent teenagers. None of them had horns growing on their heads or daggers sticking out of their teeth. Having heard enough ominous warnings, the locals expected to see terrible savages who, as the commandant told them, still eat human flesh. Many, just in case, took with them axes, iron forks, crowbars and other protective equipment, but when they saw what they had brought, they began to embarrassedly hide all this equipment behind their backs. In front of them stood exhausted, hungry, shocked people, dressed in various rags, somewhat similar to gypsies, who no, no, and even looked into these God-forsaken places... The residents felt embarrassed, then ashamed, as if they themselves had brought it to the village these unfortunates. Pity for the “robbers”, “enemies of the people” crept into our souls...

- My God! – one Russian woman could not stand it when she saw barefoot children being thrown out of a sleigh into the snow.
“There’s purmai, khudai sakhtayasan!” - the old Kazakh repeated the same thing in his own language, knocking on his palm with a small bottle with a nose.

“What have these people done, what can they do?...They will die here like flies!” - the eyes of those present spoke.

Maybe, understanding these views, refusing to accept human pity, Napsa began her dance. Suddenly, with a light breeze, she flew off the sleigh with her bare feet into the snow and danced airily. Her bare feet slid smoothly over the crust of March snow that had frozen by the evening. Those legs were unstoppable. The amazed people froze, speechless. Napsa's dance became more and more inspired. The spectators' eyes widened in horror. Everyone stepped back... Then they ran in a crowd, everyone couldn’t wait to jump into their house as soon as possible. It was as if the onlookers were blown away by the wind - the square was empty... Someone rode up on a horse and drove the deportees into a cold rural club. He, bending down from the saddle, lashed the woman, who did not stop dancing, with a long whip. From this blow her body became even more weightless, she laughed joyfully, and the dance movements became more beautiful. He hit her again. She laughed louder, spun faster... more airily...Then the rider, calling her the same name as the soldier who had thrown him into the car, let the horse gallop and soon disappeared from sight... Without stopping the dance, Napsa began to sing. The song was an improvisation, born right there, along with the dance:

Oh Chechens! Mother's milk is no good for you!
When you were born, it was not the she-wolf who gave birth at that hour,
The cow was calving in the barn, so it will be more accurate!
Shame on you, Chechens, men's pants are not for you!
Let your eyes go blind so as not to look at this shame!
Chatterboxes, you boasted that the Caucasus is only famous for you!
The day of judgment has come, why are you delaying to die?

She sat down in the snow and burst into tears. I cried for a long time. It was both crying and the long, endless, gut-wrenching howl of a she-wolf in the mountains when, having lost her wolf cubs, she speaks to the village, blaming man for her grief. Napsa's groan rushed away from the village, into the distance, towards the frozen horizon of the frozen steppe, where it became even colder. She didn’t go to the Napsa club, she was completely lost, disappeared from the village, and no one was looking for her in the nightmare of her new life. She broke away from her blood relatives on the way, when she got out when the train stopped due to need...

That evening she snuck into one of the courtyards, took a shovel there and wandered southwest, towards the mountains where she was brought from. Having chosen a place in the steppe, she began to dig a grave. The land, not yet freed from winter frost, gave in with difficulty, but she defeated it. By morning I had already dug a fairly deep hole. After that, she took the shovel and put it in the place where she took it from...

“Someone will fall asleep later,” she said, calmly laying herself and her tech in a freshly dug grave... She lay there the whole day and the next night. But the earth did not accept her. She began to beg her to accept it. She begged for a long time, kneeling down facing the grave and bowing to it, desperately beating the ground with her head and hands. But the earth refused. Then she turned to God with a complaint, but he did not heed. Napsa was offended by both of them, got up and went to the village... From the grave that Napsa dug for herself, the Chechen cemetery in Chushkala began, it was nicknamed: “Napsa Cemetery”, its only empty grave remained the first one, which time I found myself in the very center of the churchyard...

No one knew where Napsa lived, what he ate, what he did. If someone happened to meet her and asked about it, she would answer that she lives with her grandchildren... “There, at home... In the Caucasus... Nobody bothered us.... We live well... My grandchildren take care of me, I don’t know what I need... Aslambek firewood stabs, Gapur brings water... Susurka brings corn flour, Gairbek brings meat...".

One day, Saidash - he was burying his dead daughter that day - found Napsa sleeping in her grave and forcibly brought her to him. But the old woman ran away on the very first night, as soon as the rest of the household fell asleep. Saidash, herding rural cows, met her again in the steppe near the graves and reproached her for why she left:

- My son Saidash, I have to look after them. Who will be with them if I leave? – Napsa stroked the low grave mounds with her bony hand. - It’s my duty to feed them, give them something to drink, who will do this if I’m not there?.. You go away, Saidash, go away. My grandchildren should come now. Go, good man, they don’t want to come near me in front of you...

And Saidash went to catch up with his cows, they scattered across the steppe while the shepherd talked with Napsa...

People have gathered at the railway station and have been living by the side of the railway for more than a month. Now they have nowhere to go. They say that permission for them to go home was given at the very top, but no one saw this permission with their eyes or held it in their hands.

“It’s probably not true that they allowed it, otherwise why would they keep us?” – the tall, thin old man Konai from the Kharachoev tribe doubts.
- I swear on the soul of my father, there is such permission! They even sent a representative for us! “Many have already left from other places,” Nesarsolta, who wears a tunic from the war years with a “Guard” badge screwed into his chest, answers him. His medals and orders were stolen by his children long ago, and now this badge is the main memory remaining of the war, where he was for three years. He was repeatedly advised to throw away this piece of iron; many Chechen front-line soldiers threw away all their awards long ago due to the fact that the people were expelled while they were fighting. And Nesarsolta never wanted to part with his pathetic relic, although everyone made fun of him because of this badge. In fact, he is the most literate of the men, he graduated from as many as 7 classes...
“Then why are they marinating us here?”
- It seems like there are no carriages...
- They were found, damn them, to bring us here! The war seemed to be going on, but it didn’t stop...
- Then there was Stalin!
- And now who is on our neck?
- Now Khurshov...
- Let his father live with a pig!
- Uh-uh, people, don’t say that, may Allah thank him, he was sent to us from above! “At every prayer, I invoke the mercy of Allah on him,” says the energetic-looking old man, rolling up the goatskin on which he had just performed the midday prayer.
- In that case, where is the permission he gave us?
-Where is this commissioner?
“He’s probably having fun somewhere...
- May his mother cry for him! What people is he from?
- One of our people, a Chechen, they say, used to be a big boss...
- So, from those who brought us to this...
– And when will these people be satisfied with our grief? As soon as the people groan in misfortune, there will be no trace of them, but as soon as we begin to come to life, they are right there... Again they become our representatives...
- He seems to be hinting that we should chip in and give him some money...
- Wha-o-o? - Dirty dog! I told you that now they will begin to grow like dog brides (that’s what mushrooms are called in Chechen) after the rain!
- Don’t get too excited, Bitsig, maybe you need money to
the local authorities will settle our matter...
– What else is the matter?!
- Well, so that they let us go home...
- Well, they just said that Khurshov has already fixed everything!
- Uh-uh, man, where is Khurshov, and where are we? After all, you need to get this permission from the local authorities, or maybe from our authorized representative, this is what is required for this, probably...
- O Allah, how patient you are!
- Leave it all alone, brothers! Should we, the disenfranchised, get our rights? The main thing is that they let us go home, let's give everything for this. We didn't come here for money. We need to go home, people. Home! While the one who brought us here has died, and while the one who allows us to go home is alive!
-Where is he, the commissioner? I'll talk to this cross between a donkey and a scabby mare!
– Stop stupid speeches, Saidash! Do you want our journey to become even longer?
– What can they do to us worse than what they have already done?
- If we anger him, he may leave, leaving us here...
- Oh, if it were up to me, I would take the soul out of him!
- Shut up, puppy! Good will not grow from such speeches. Bite your tongue!
- Don’t be angry, dada Baga, it’s his youth speaking in him...
- So that I don’t hear another word from you until we get into the carriage, little sucker!
- And you won’t hear the words, and I won’t go home...
- Here are offspring worthy of damnation!
- We're going home... We're going home, people! - Napsa carries his endless dance along the narrow corridor of the road, where the gathered men stand, sit and make noise.
- Come to us, Napsa, here, here! - call the women who perched against the wall of things.
“I have no time.... No time... No time.... I’m going to Stalin... For permission for my grandchildren and those who sleep in the “graves of Napsa,” she answers melodiously, without turning around to the call, and swims through the line of parted men to the side station buildings...

The men continue to make noise for a long time. They come to the conclusion that the Chechens are the most stupid, restless and devoid of consent people, a people without a master, an orphan without a father, who does not know how to live like human beings... Then they calm down. They agree. Organization emerges. Someone brings a pillowcase from a pillow, it is still completely covered in fluff, and everyone throws money in there for the commissioner...

- May they get stuck in his throat! - shouts a woman whose husband took the money hidden behind the collar of her dress to throw it into the pillowcase.
- May Allah punish him for the grief of my orphans! - another sighs...
- May he spit dried blood! - says the third...

Several old men walk around the entire human corridor with an insatiable pillowcase. It's finally filling up. Then another group goes with her to find the commissioner. The rest are silent for a long time. Everyone thought about their own. And the thoughts, apparently, are heavy, weighed down by the burden of thirteen years of exile from the homeland, the graves of relatives remaining in a foreign land, an incurable memory, the pain of which can never subside...

“And they brought us here for free,” someone says amid the general silence, seemingly talking to himself.
- No, son. What was paid when they were brought here will not fit in a pillowcase, it’s better to keep quiet, for the sake of Allah,” the old man who heard this responds, his face is not visible because of his large, sinewy hand, he sits hunched over: resting his forehead on his palm, and his elbow in the knee. But then the sensible old man burst out:
– The most expensive price for all this is the desecrated graves of our fathers! For I heard that tombstones are used to pave the roads, streets, squares of the local cities... And everything else is earthly, son...
– One Russian in Karaganda told me that a monument to Yermolov was erected in Grozny again! To the Tsar’s general, who swore to destroy all Chechens and said that he would not rest until he saw the stuffed animal of the last of us in the museum, a young man of about twenty-five intervenes in the conversation.
-Did you really hear that, boy? – the old man straightened up, removed his hand from his forehead, his face turned out to be wrinkled, but still bravely proud. Whole teeth flashed in a sad smile.
- That’s how it was, yes, I heard this when I was studying there at the Federal Zoological Zone, that Russian worked for us as a foreman, he himself came from Grozny... He even said that we were illegally deported.
“This is bad, son, there shouldn’t be a monument to Yermolov.” Evil people are never happy - neither during life nor after death, even the largest monument is of no use to them...
– How can you erect a monument on the land of the people to their own executioner? To arouse even more hatred towards him?
“You don’t need to accumulate anger, but think, son.” We cannot continue to remain a people who do not think. Until now, we lived as we had to, and thought later. Now we must live, thinking forward. By hating him, you'll probably wake up one day just as angry. And if you start thinking, you will be above them and above your hatred...

Several more days of agonizing waiting passed. Finally, the carriages arrived.

“It’s not the locomotive that’s dragging them, it’s the pillowcase!” - someone joked.

But no one laughed.

– If only we had thought of it earlier, we would have already been home!
- Eh, brother, if we had realized, we wouldn’t be here, and the pillowcase wouldn’t be needed...

By evening, people were loaded into freight cars... Maybe among them were those who carried these people here thirteen years ago, and someone, who knows, could even get into the very one in which they were brought... Napsa did not board the train .

- Get in, quickly, we’re leaving for home! - people shouted to her. They begged, pulled into the carriage, but in vain...
– I will arrive by the next train... With those who remained in the “graves of Napsa”... With grandchildren... Stalin will give us permission.... And the carriage...

The lingering whistle of the locomotive, like the voice of a muezzin calling to prayer, drowned out the voice of the old woman... The locomotive blew out thick smoke, coughed up steam, shuddered in place like a huge wounded animal, and slowly moved off.

- We'll catch up with you! We won't leave you behind! - Napsa shouts, disappearing into the smoke along with his old tech...