For last two-three years mullah Baikan had according to his words a dog’s life.
Cattle went off, incomes shortened, people ceased to respect him. Even honorable sofies who had earlier named him respectfully taksyr1 forgot now about the prophet’s precepts and started thinking only about their bellies. Sofy Ibrai who had just recently been telling his arshin beads that he had taken by ishan cut out now a shirt from a long turban and dragged along like a farmhand after a wooden plough.
- Oh, my god, what has happen with people! Perhaps the End of Days has really come… - Baikan mullah sighed dispiritedly.
“… And now one more bad luck has come – komsomol. I thought: this is some kind of a monster with one eye, but it turned out – these are the very aul madcaps!.. About six years ago I myself taught many of them. Oh, my god! Can it be that they haven’t got any use from the holy teaching? Didn’t I bring them up in the godly spirit? And now they tootle pipes, bash out melodeons and play up to shaitan!”
Mullah Baikan couldn’t throw Komsomols-atheists out from his head. They with their teacher in the head speak out especially vehemently against religion. They recite ugly versets, adapt for stage sacrilegious plays and laugh at true Allah’s servants. Of course, Baikan didn’t visit their concourses, but he knew very well what was going their and everything tumbled inside him out of spite. Barefooted kids without trousers – having learnt the komsomol couplets - they also cried after him:
1Mister
… Like a dog he eats and doesn’t work,
Like a louse he doesn’t suffer sucking blood –
Give alms to poor mullah!..
- Oh, our powerful creator! – Baikan-mullah begged out of despair from time to time. – I’d rather die than see this all.
Recently there was hold a meeting in Idris’s house, Komsomols were, of course, also present there. The aul teacher and the secretary of the aul soviet Karim headed them. Baikan-mullah hated especially Karim of these two heads. He started shivering out of spite just after hearing this name. He had a special cause for this. Recently the mullah buried Tnimbai’s mother and in hurry didn’t inform the local Soviet about this. “You have said a knell prayer behind our backs!” – Karim cried him and right then having scribbled a protocol brought him to justice and the teacher didn’t say anything. Since that time the mullah decided that perhaps he was not such a bad dzhigit. Although, of course, he had wandered out of right way but perhaps he had worthy parents. Besides, every time when they met the teacher started a serious business conversation.
- You must work, honorable. Take care of useful labour, - he said.
Who can say that it was bad advice?!
So, mullah-Baikan also wriggled unnoticeably his way to the meeting in Idris’s house. The teacher was taking the floor. Not tearing his look away the mullah kept his eyes on Karim. That one said yes the teacher every minute, shook his head, stood up and then sat down again, and cried hotly out at the slightest pretext: “Yes, yes! You are right! Right! Exactly! So true!” While looking at this all Baikan even screwed scornfully his face.
“Nonentity! – He decided. – Perhaps he is cut out to be a henchman and a bootlicker. All his life long he will cling to somebody’s hemstitch!”
However, the mullah couldn’t help sitting till the end of the meeting. Save the god to catch these ratbags eyes. They will say at once: “Our mullah visits meetings!” He jogged home depressed and annoyed and here like a mad camel his wife started attaching him. She started bawling about the house and baying with cracks two dirty imps in all corners.
- From the early morning he takes his staff, raises his head and hang about around the yards, - she bawled, - and about the fact that we have nothing to eat at home he doesn’t even think about this.
- Apyrmai, do you think I don’t want to job? – The mullah started finding excuses. – But today nobody will even give alms. People do no sacrifices. And even if somebody dies so the aul chairman Kodebai lays his hands on everything at once. This all is for hungry ones, he says. For empty-handed ones, he says. And when we do not have any incomes from memorials so where can I take from?! Think about!
“The unrighteous have forgotten the god. The End of Days is approaching”, - the mullah thought. It already seemed to him that there was left no one serene Mussulman on the earth, all people had become atheists and everybody listened only to shameful speeches of apostates. However much the mullah might resent he didn’t have enough strength to stand against the flow of life, fight against the new practice and living…
In those latter days Baikan-mullah was followed relentlessly only by one secret thought – to become a thaumaturge. “If I were able to remove mountains anyhow, - he thought, - everybody would follow me; all neighbourhoods would peep into my mouth. As for Karim himself he would repudiate his komsomol and would become my true servant. He would say yes after each my word, would say: “Yes, yes! You are right! Exactly! So true!” But it might be just impossible to pervert the teacher. This Kafir had his own firm faith.”
This thought haunted his mind. If he could work wonders, for example, as Musa-paigambar, then he would turn both Kodebai and Karim – for the fact that they disturb him to held a memorial service and marry honorable Mussulmen, - into wonderers dying from thirst. Or as Lut-paigambar, he would turn them into stone columns. These all are trifles for a thaumaturge, of course. He must just master the holy secret. And here waiting for a wonder or a Grace of God the mullah read night after night shabby holy books being black because of time and prayed to the max…
It came a berachan night. Baikan-mullah prepared especially for it. Whispering uninterruptedly and repeating “Isim agizam” in all sharps and flats he put on his bright chapan – people usually put on such one for a memorial service, wound his head with a new turban, spread his prayer rug – shai-namaz and dropped on his knees. While telling his black beads long like a thin intestine which he had got personally from ishan he started nasally singing “Subyhan-allah”. The dreams swarmed in his head and flew into the sky; he remembered some unique deeds of ancient thaumaturges. His heart was beating forefeeling the Grace of God. He seemed that an angel had soughedover him with his wings and whispered: “Today, today your wish will become true”.
And then - either in dream or in reality – he saw himself in a high mosk with a cupola up to the sky and decorated by holy writings. As if he were standing on the very mihrab – a hathpace from which preaching is usually read - and was telling his beads. And the beads were not those ones which he had got but other ones, made of precious stones. Around him on their knees there sat Murids in snow-white turbans and they repeated after him. “Iya, al-la-ah…” – and this was redoubling about the mosk.
Baikan-mullah raised his heard not realizing still if it was in dream or in reality. And from a distance there heard a soft calling voice.
- You, my servant, have grinned and born enough in this dissolute world. – The Allah said. – But for you I would unleash my visitation on the earth. But only for your sake I have tempered justice with mercy. I appoint you to be my prophet. You must put all the unrighteous and whorish people on the right track. Return your nation in the fold of Islamism!..
After hearing the Allah’s words the mullah suddenly remembered the Komsomols and their atheistic words started haunting in his ears: “Religion – it’s opium for people”.
- Oh, all-good and powerful Allah! – The mullah started imploring. - I will fulfill all your precepts; just take away these shouters-Komsomols out of my sight. They goof on the faith, laugh at me and compose miserable songs.
- I will restrain them, - there heard the voice.
- And what about Karim?
- I will take Karim into your hands too.
- And the teacher?
The voice was keeping silent long, and then it pronounced somehow inaudibly:
- I don’t have any power at him. He is not in my competence. The teacher has some other god…
After hearing these words the exulted soul of the mullah grew dark a little. “How can it be? – He couldn’t understand. – People say that Allah is the Master of the world. Is not he really powerful? Eh, it can be… All the same the most are in his power. He might be old already. He has been ruling since the creation of the world still and all. And as for Komsomols, so they have just recently raised their heads. And their god might be as young as they are. And if he is young it means that he is inexperienced and low-powered…” These thoughts consoled the mullah.
***
Suddenly the cupola opened out above his head; from there flowed bright light and it covered everything around. He had hardly been amazed at this wonder before somebody’s hand led up a good-looking horse to him. It was some smaller than a usual horse but much taller and stately than a donkey and, of course, not so lop-eared.
From somewhere there heard the same voice again:
- My servant! I send you a winged fast horse. Ride on it about all eight spheres of the dome of the sky. Enjoy your soul!
Being the head of the faith Baikan-mullah wasn’t surprised to get such a present. Besides, already for a long time he felt a necessity to meat Allah face to face to have a heart to heart talk. Now he worried especially about one thing: and if in connection with income increasing the Komsomols put on him an extra tax…
When he was just about to set his foot in the stirrup a soft hand carried him under his arms. He turned around. A winged virgin with a face like the moon was smiling him softly.
- I am a peri, - the virgin said, - and I am sent to serve you.
She took the reins of the fast horse, waved with her wings and flew. And the winged fast horse flew too. In a twinkle she came through all eight spheres and found herself out in the Garden of Eden.
- It is the very Eden. Such honorable quests like you live and enjoy here, - the hawra sang to the mullah.
The trees in the garden were high and shadowy. Their branches were bending under the weight of fruit.
There were singing different off-beat birds and they were shouting to one another about the whole garden. From out the trees twisting their hips there were floating more and more virgins with faces like the moon or the sun. Their silver laugh excited his soul.
- They all are hawras… - The peri said.
They lined up in front of the mullah and bent respectfully having dropped their chaste eyes. And exactly at that time there heard Allah’s voice:
- My servant! What a grief ails your soul?
Somehow or other the mullah tore his eyes off the virgins and started speaking up about his grief that had already been eating his heart for such a long time:
- From time to time Kodebai shouts at me, doesn’t let me perform memorial services and marry people without a paper of the aul chairman.
- Tobakabyl shouts at me too. He says: I am a local soviet, give me the cart!
- And Komsomols pull people’s legs. They say: the mullah is a rascal and a deceiver. Don’t listen to him. Don’t give him sacrifices.
- We have few cattle and no incomes…
- I have not time to listen long to you! Say the main! – Allah interrupted the mullah.
This time the voice of the creator sounded for all the world like the voice of an office file clerk: “Quit your nonsense! I don’t have time. Say shortly!..”
The mullah pressed himself close to the crest of his winged fast horse and started sobbing:
- I have the only wish.
- Say! I will fulfill it.
- Do me a thaumaturge!..
There heard rolls of thunder in the sky, everything started trembling and shaking. The mullah was scared in earnest. The virgin smiled:
- The supreme archangels are gathering. They are preparing an important event.
Thereafter with whistle and noise there rushed a formation of archangels.
- What will you order? You have become the Master of the earth! – They said with one accord.
The mullah was triumphing. He was about to look at the hawra and she, a sly baggage, started both making eyes at him and luring the mullah with all her charms. Mullah’s blood was up, he was about to rush to her, but here his winged fast horse shielded aside and poor Baikan rolled somewhere off. And he had hardy shouted before he plopped heavily into bright burning fire…
- Oh, freaking, you will die! You will burn off! – Somebody cried bringing him to life.
The mullah opened his eyes, but instead of a hawra who was taking the reins of his fast horse his wife Aishan was standing at the head of the bed. And she was not just standing, she was bawling as usual. There floated harsh smoke around the house. It sniffed burning. Cracking and booming the fire was rushing on the floor.
- What is it? What’s up? – The mullah took alarm.
- Freaking! – Aishan tore the turban off his head. – Cannot you sleep in your bed? Your beads will kill you! You will become crazy! You see: you have overthrown the lamp. Kerosene flashed up and now your turban is burning… Uh!..
The mullah came to life. His expensive turban which he had been keeping more than integrity and reputation of his father burnt off up to holes. The flaps of his bright chapan were soaked with kerosene and stunk ugly.
- I have seen a wonder! A wonder! Eh, dash it all! I want to sleep, wife. Sleep!
And the mullah angrily threw his black beads towards the threshold…
