kilograms, but, in his opinion, he will master this weight without much difficulty. Bagila involuntarily chuckled and looked at the door. Jasyn was not there. She laid her head on the pillow and sighed wearily. He walked along the crowded avenue, seeing nothing but the biting glance of Karatai, which hit him like knife. “He looked at me with contempt. He was not surprised that in distant Crimea, in the hospital room of his daughter, there was an unfamiliar Kazakh,” thought Jasyn. “He recognised me, yes, he knows me. Damn it, how his pupils trembled…! And he, it seems, is not a bad person. What did he say to his daughter? ‘It’s all my fault, I’m sorry. How could I not have noticed! As the father I should have known.’ He really is tormented…” Suddenly he remembered his own children. He did not know why, but before his eyes, they appeared lying in beds, in a hospital ward. Their eyes were full of tears. And all of his relatives stood in a crowd in the ward. “Their father will not come,” they said. “He will never come. He will not shed a tear and say: ‘It’s all my fault.’” Jasyn felt unwell, the blood pounded painfully in his temples. He was lost, he ended up on the edge of the city. He went out again to the street leading to the centre. He wandered without any meaning or purpose. When the sun hit the sea horizon and the water turned golden, he went to the bus station. It was fifteen minutes before the bus left. The passen- gers were already seated. There were no tickets. As Jasyn approached, appearing suddenly out of nowhere, Malika ran up and stood at the entrance of the ‘Ikarus’ bus. “Oh, thank god, where did you go? I almost lost my mind!” She blurted out, barely catching her breath. “The bus is about to leave.” “So what, if I don’t take this one, then there is al- ways the next one. The plane is at twelve o’clock.” “What a calm person you are! Fine, fly how you want to fly. There will be no more buses after this, and you’ll die of boredom on the bus-tram.” Jasyn noted of Malika’s efficiency with pleasure. In Yalta, where you won’t find a plane ticket if you need to fly urgently during such hot summer days, she man-
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