Trains in these parts went from East to West, and from West to East…
On either side of the railway lines lay the great wide spaces of the desert—Sary-Ozeki, the Middle lands of the yellow steppes.
In these parts any distance was measured in relation to the railway, as if from the Greenwich meridian…
And the trains went from East to West, and from West to East…
The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov is set in an alternate timeline where the United States and Soviet Union have formed a working alliance and joint space program called Demiurgos. From their base in the ocean exactly halfway between San Francisco and Vladivostok, Demiurgos monitors the exploratory ship they have sent to space with two astronauts—one American, one Soviet.
Yedige is an aging rail worker in a middle-of-the-steppe town in Kazakhstan. Demiurgos means nothing to him, since it has nothing to do with his land, his people, his camel, or his work. His village has only a handful of people left, as the young leave to find a better life. He understands, no one would choose his life, his work, his home. Still, he stays, and he takes things as they come.
There’s only one man that has been there longer than him, Kazangap, and his death opens the novel. Yedige has owed much to this elder, and insists on a traditional funeral—which includes carrying Kazangap’s body to the region’s ancestral cemetery.
The vast steppe and strong camel make Yedige thoughtful and in his mind the past and present collide. Outside his mind, outside the steppe, outside the world, the Soviet and American astronauts have disappeared from their ship.
I thought the two narrative lines would never intertwine—until they did in the most magnificent way. I hung on every word. Beautiful and desolate.
Aitmatov, Chingiz. The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years. Translated by John French. Indiana University Press,1983.
