Or was it really the wind blowing the hide? It was impossible to not answer these questions. But how and with what? Finding no answers, Zhanaidarov looked expressively at the secretary. He looked at the instructors around him. Nobody knows how the situation would have ended if the head of the cattle breeding department, the one who had suggested putting Ashten on the plinth, had not come to his aid. ‘This is a find by our sculptors,’ he said suddenly, raising his eyes to the statue. They decided that if the skin in the tanner’s hands were made of plaster or cast in bronze, it would not look good and would be unoriginal. If they gave him a natural skin, a natural hide, it would be much more interesting. We have a dashing collection of such skins here. The workers of the plant change this skin every week and renew it. Such a decision by the sculpture’s authors brings viewers one step closer to the truth of life.’ He spoke at a feverish pace, so much so that he probably didn’t realise what he was saying. But the guests were stunned, and did not take their stunned eyes off the wind-whipped skin in the hands of the bronze man. Such a simple and therefore ingenious solution by the sculptors shocked them, and they emitted whole platoons of words in praise of the designers, claiming that hardly anywhere else could an artist have shown such ingenuity. At the moment when the guests again raised their heads upwards, then, as Ashten’s fingertips had become stiff, the sheepskin, under every successive rush of wind, was torn from his hands and, swaying and whirling in the air, came down smoothly just before the Englishmen. They parted and stared with some trepidation at the fallen rocks of genius. ‘You dog, couldn’t you have been patient a little longer!’ reproved Zhanaidarov to Ashten without raising his eyes. Neither the guests nor the interpreter understood what he said and began to interrogate. An explanation was given by the secretary for ideology: ‘He expresses embarrassment to the guests about what has happened. It has never happened before; it seems the workmen didn’t attach the hide very firmly this time.’ Here the Scotsman turned to the interpreter and delivered a long monologue. The interpreter was silent, shrugging his shoulders, then approached Zhanaidarov: ‘He says: you change this skin every

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