Death of the Snake Catcher by Ak Welsapar

Author:Ak Welsapar [Welsapar, Ak]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Glagoslav Publications

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And now, many years later, sitting in front of an enormous snake, the aksakal mused, “How many years have passed since I learnt my trade? Was it a mistake to choose this path? And what is true now? Is it as it was or as it was remembered? In any case, who can answer these questions? Nobody. These events were long ago carried away by the sands. Yes, and many witnesses to those days when they shunned me have already departed this earth. But I am here, living, and sometimes I think that I don’t need anything now – not honour and respect, not praise, not my talent for healing, nothing. I want to live, simply live, regardless of everything. Although… did my life have meaning?”

The old man’s lips curled up into a quivering smile. In the cobra’s round, cold eyes, drops had begun to grow, as she enigmatically swayed in front of him. The next minute, sensing the movement of the human hand, she momentarily swung to the side, then drew herself out straight again when the old man took his cap off and put it down beside himself on the sand. His lips began to move weakly again and he spoke in a whisper.

“I’m looking for meaning? Well, look here, I’m sitting and talking to you, and you are listening, and that is meaning.”

The cobra calmed down.

The old man felt that his strength lately had noticeably faded and a strange peace had been penetrating deeper into his body, his muscles were heavy with weariness, and they only grudgingly obeyed him. He would hole himself up in his ramshackle hut for days on end, and then he would come out, staggering from weakness, and wander around his home, weakly lifting his legs. It seemed that the main purpose of his present life was to be a recluse. In summer, he hid from the sun, in winter, from the cold, and always, from people. For some time, he hadn’t wanted to see anybody at all and could go without food for days. When it was time, he ate quickly out of habit, rather than desire, swallowing down anything that accidentally came his way, even if it was completely tasteless. It was the process of eating, more than hunger, which reminded him he was alive. As he chewed the hardened chunks of roast mutton he had stored away for winter out of habit, he ever more frequently caught himself thinking it was the last time he would open the jar, the last time he would spoon out the stew, the last time he would gulp it down. In the future, I guess, there’ll be no need.

And nobody special had brought him any sheep for a long time. The leader, Kerlen, had passed away several years earlier. It was boring now without his ardent protector. People had eventually lost interest in him. It was like he had been buried alive, his notorious reputation condemning him to loneliness. Solitude had killed him long before real old age.

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