The winding, irregular road that had been carved out in the rock and resembled a lightning flashing in the dark, led him higher and higher. Climbing up, Saosh Yant recollected that when he had been a child and seen this place for the first time, this road hadn’t existed yet. There had been a very narrow and steep horseway, along which his grandfather had often taken him from the village of Ulagan to Lake Teletskoe.
He recollected that he, a three-year-old kid, had been sitting on the wide, powerful back of the horse, in front of his grandpa and staring at the beauty all around him. It had then seemed both magical and harsh at the same time. The sublime mountains with the hoary waterfalls that streamed down their slopes. The clouds that hovered high in the summer sky, with their shaggy beards hanging low over the ground in wintertime. The majestic, impassable floodplain of the Chulyshman River and, of course, Lake Teletskoe itself, its cold, immense mirror stretching between the steep cliffs – all that seemed stern, magnificent and even a little frightening to him. But he wasn’t afraid. Because with him was his worldly-wise guardian and protector – his grandfather. And Saosh knew that everything would be fine. That the powerful and severe beauty of these places would be favorable to them. So it had always been.
Actually, ever since he was a child, he’d felt the guidance of some tremendous and powerful Force, the meaning of which was unknown to him. But he’d felt it all the time. It seemed to have been protecting him throughout his life. This absolute knowledge of what to do had never let him down. And he was very grateful to it.
Of course, that wasn’t true of other people. For example, on the horseway, which had once been there instead of the road, a lot of foolhardy young fellows had wound up dead. Many good men had been taken by Erlik Khan. Youthful, handsome, strong. And it had seemed this would have always been so, until the close of the last century when two bulldozers laid the smooth winding road on the slope, on which our hero was now ascending. With every turn, with every curve, he was going higher and higher and couldn’t help admiring the severe landscape.
Now it seemed not so magical but still wonderful and incredibly beautiful. Over there, opposite the slope, on the other side of the gorge, was a magnificent, white-bearded waterfall streaming down from the steep cliff. And a bit higher up the river he could see the snowy peaks of the unscalable, eternal mountains.
“Ah, Altai, my Altai!” Saosh sighed delightedly, looking over the surroundings. “How great you are, how majestic and beautiful! My only country! My whole life is in you. With you I am forever bonded.”
Having got an eyeful of the beauty around, he went on climbing up the slope. When he reached the middle, he paused to catch his breath and saw another overturned dilapidated car – it seemed to be a Moskvitch.
“What is it?” a thought flitted through his mind. And instead of the answer, a picture flashed like a lightning in his mind’s eye as it had already done before. The Moskvitch, chock-full with all kinds of stuff as usual, is going down the slope. Here are people, rugs, provisions for a full month, carefully bundled clothes… You name it! There’s even a couple of geese and a chicken. Driving at this time of year is sheer madness but the driver, apparently, doesn’t have confidence in his abilities and relies on pure luck. He is trying not to pick up speed, constantly braking a little, and the Moskvitch, slowly but steadily, is crawling down. At first everything goes well. But toward the middle the brake fluid begins to boil, the brake shoes overheat, and the car starts bowling uncontrolled along the rut, downhill. The driver sharply turns the wheel away from the precipice. The car goes over a treacherously protruding rock, loses its balance and overturns.
“Thank God everyone survived,” Saosh Yant breathed a sigh of relief, recollecting the recent picture of the Zhiguli, and walked on.
