slightest wind?” The director, who was lying on his side, raised his head and looked angrily at the owner with the air of a man demanding immediate justice. “Is that how it is?” The shepherd breathed heavily. “Well, hold on! Who was it, that gave me weedy pastures during summer grazing? You! Who sent the fattest sheep to be butchered for a feast? You again! Who promised me ten stacks of feed? You! And what did you give me? Only one stack, and one that is farther from me than Mecca. Deceiving me by promising a tractor? That you did. Only recently did I see the equipment for the first time in the winter, and then they brought it for the sake of the district committee to pave the road. What other reasons were needed? And the cattle, therefore, should not fall, but give two lambs from each ewe? But wait, the worst is yet to come in spring, it’s all just flowers, isn’t it?! It’ll be great if we save fifty out of a hundred lambs!” Having shouted all this, Kolbai turned to the door, as if saying with all his appearance: “Now do what you want with me!” Karatai looked inquiringly at the director, then at Turgat, they were thinking, “Why are you look- ing this way!” None of them could immediately answer the secretary, and what was there to say. Turgat, trying to take the trouble away from himself, began to mutter that he travelled around with the director of his household, pointed out to him the shortcomings, which, due to remoteness, had to be controlled by phone. Karatai just shook his head, frowned, and waved Turgat away as if he were an annoying fly. He fell silent in mid-sentence, buried himself in a bowl of tea. Karatai decided upon his arrival in the region to invite the directors of weak farms and talk to them properly. He considered it inappropriate to start this conver- sation with the director now, in the house of an already upset shepherd. He heard the most important thing: the secret words of the breeder, we let him grab onto the end of the disturbing thread leading to the truth, now it will not be difficult to get to that point himself. “Today, forty-five fallen sheep were cleared off the list of the central estate. If you calculate how much it all
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