er room,’ Kamasiya interrupted him. ‘A man should know his limits. Shame on the whole village… And now your engine’s stalled.’ At night Yesirkep snored as if he was being strangled. Convinced that it was impossible to sleep next to him, his wife moved the children into the next room and shut the doors tightly. Toiboldy came around at dawn. We have to fix the station by all means, he said. He was followed by the MTM superintendent. One by one the head of the club, the watchmen of the bathhouse, shops and ware- houses came in. They all heard the same reply: ‘The diesel is out of order. Until a spare part is delivered from the centre, there will be no power’. In the afternoon the street in front of Yesirkep’s house turned into a bazaar. In the evening the second episode of Kyz-Zhibek was to be shown, and the people of Akzhar were begging and pleading with Yesirkep. All of his ancestors (up to the seventh generation), he and his offspring were praised so much that it seems even Allah could not resist. Yesirkep did not lift a finger. He himself, when he lived on the central farmstead, had already watched the film, so he couldn’t have been calmer. ‘You’ve got golden hands! You can do anything…’ ‘What do you mean, a jammed cylinder? For a master like you that’s a piece of cake,’ came the familiar voice of a young man, feeling the insults of the day before gradually fading away. ‘We gave that rascal a good reprimand,’ someone in the crowd said, unaware that he was tapping at the power station manager’s sore spot. ‘He doesn’t know how to escape shame; he says he may forgive me, and I am ready to present him with a horse and a chapan! He slaughtered a sheep and is humbly waiting for you in his house. Please, do your best, and give us some light for the evening. ‘To fix the cylinder is…’ Yesirkep began very weightily, about to give his consent. But then someone in the crowd said: ‘If you trust me, the MTM mechanics will fix it,’ he announced, screwing up the whole thing. Yesirkep faltered again. But the young man imme- diately shut the impatient one up: ‘Are there any worthwhile young men in the MTM?! Nobody here is capable of fixing the cylinder. Stay there