Zuleikha

by Guzel Yakhina

  The old woman sits enthroned in the corner of honor, the tur, drowning in heaps of plumped pillows on a mighty bed with an ornate cast-iron headboard. Her feet rest on the floor in soft milk-colored felt boots embroidered with colorful braiding. Her head – which is wrapped in a long white scarf all the way to her shaggy eyebrows – stands straight and steady on her droopy neck. Her narrow eye openings are set atop high, broad cheekbones and look triangular, thanks to eyelids that sag crookedly on each side.

  “A person could die waiting for you to heat the bathhouse,” her mother-in-law calmly says.

  Her mouth is sunken and wrinkled, like an old goose rump; she has almost no teeth but speaks distinctly and intelligibly.

  As if you’ll die, thinks Zuleikha, creeping into the room. You’ll even be saying nasty things about me at my funeral.

  “But don’t get your hopes up: I’m planning to live a long time,” the old woman continues. She sets aside her jasper prayer beads and gropes around for a walking stick darkened with age. “Murtaza and I will outlive you all. We have strong roots and grow from a good tree.”

  “Now she’ll talk about my rotten root,” sighs Zuleikha, doomed, as she brings the old woman a fur cap, felt boots, and a long, robe-like dog-hair coat.

  “Not like you, so thin-blooded.” The old woman extends a bony foot in front of her; Zuleikha carefully removes the soft, almost downy felt boot and puts on a tall, rigid felt boot. “You didn’t end up with either height or a face. Of course maybe there was honey smeared between your legs in your youth but then again that spot didn’t exactly flourish, now, did it? You only brought girls into the world and not one of them survived.”

  Zuleikha pulls too hard at the second boot and the old woman cries out from pain.

  “Easy there, little girl! I speak the truth and you know it yourself. Your family line is ending, wasting away, you thin-boned thing. And that’s how it should be: a rotten root should rot and a healthy one should live.”

  The Vampire Hag leans on her walking stick, rises from the bed, and immediately stands an entire head taller than Zuleikha. She cranes her broad chin, which resembles a hoof, and directs the gaze of her white eyes at the ceiling:

  “The Almighty sent me a dream about that just now.”

  Zuleikha throws the robe-like coat on the Vampire Hag’s shoulders, puts on the fur cap, and wraps her neck with a soft shawl.

  All-powerful Allah, another dream! Her mother-in-law rarely dreamt, but the dreams that came to her turned out to be prophetic. They were strange and sometimes ghastly visions filled with hints and innuendo, where what was to come was reflected indistinctly, distorted as if by a hazy, warped mirror. Even the Vampire Hag herself was not always able to interpret their meaning. A couple of weeks or months later, the mystery would come to light, when something would happen, usually bad and rarely good, but always important, repeating with twisted precision a picture from a dream that was already half-forgotten.

  The old witch was never wrong. In 1915, right after her son’s wedding, Murtaza appeared to her, trudging among red flowers. They were unable to unravel the dream but there was soon a fire in the household; the storehouse and old bathhouse burned to the ground and so the answer to the riddle was found. One night a couple of months later, the old woman saw a mountain of yellow skulls with large horns and predicted an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease that would go on to mow down all the cattle in Yulbash. The dreams came for the next ten years, all sorrowful and frightening: children’s shirts desolately floating along the river, cradles split in half, chickens drowning in blood … During that time, Zuleikha gave birth to and immediately buried four daughters. A vision of the Great Famine in 1921 was scary, too. Air as black as soot appeared to her mother-in-law and people were swimming in it as if it were water, slowly dissolving, gradually losing their arms, legs, and heads.

  “Are we going to sweat here much longer?” The old woman impatiently knocks her walking stick and is first to head for the door. “You want to make me sweat before going outside so I catch cold?”

  Zuleikha hurriedly turns down the wicks on the kerosene lamps and rushes after her.

  The Vampire Hag stops on the front steps; she doesn’t go outside alone. Zuleikha catches her mother-in-law by the elbow – the Vampire Hag jabs her long, gnarled fingers painfully into Zuleikha’s arm – and leads her to the bathhouse. They walk slowly, carefully placing their feet in the loose snow: the blizzard hasn’t subsided and the path is partially covered again.

  “It must have been you that cleared the snow in the yard, wasn’t it?” the Vampire Hag smirks with half her mouth, standing in the entryway, allowing her snow-covered coat to be taken off. “It shows.”

  She shakes her head, throws her cap on the floor (Zuleikha quickly dips to pick it up), fumbles for the door, and goes into the changing room by herself.

  It smells of steamed birch leaves, bur-marigold, and fresh damp wood. The Vampire Hag sits down on the wide, long bench by the wall and freezes in silence: she’s permitting herself to be undressed. Zuleikha first takes off her white headscarf embroidered with large, heavy beads. Then a roomy velvet vest with a patterned clasp on the stomach. Beads: a coral strand, pearl strand, glass strand, and a hefty necklace that has darkened over time. A thick outer smock. A thin inner smock. Felt boots. Baggy wide pants; one pair, a second. Downy socks. Woolen socks. Cotton socks. Zuleikha wants to pull the heavy crescent earrings from her mother-in-law’s fat, creased earlobes but she screams, “Don’t touch! You might lose something … Or say you lost it …” Zuleikha decides not to touch the rings of dulled yellow metal on the old woman’s misshapen, wrinkled fingers.

  When her clothing is neatly laid out in a strict, set order, taking up the entire bench from wall to wall, Zuleikha’s mother-in-law carefully feels all the objects, pursing her lips in dissatisfaction, straightening and smoothing out some items. Zuleikha quickly throws her own things in the laundry basket by the entrance and leads the old woman into the steam room.

  As soon as they open the door they’re enveloped in hot air and the aromas of white-hot stones and steamed bast fiber. Moisture begins streaming down their faces and backs.

  “You were too lazy to heat it properly, it’s barely warm,” the old woman says through her teeth, scratching her sides. She climbs up on the highest steaming shelf, lies with her face toward the ceiling, and closes her eyes – so she’ll be soaking wet.

  Zuleikha takes a seat by the basins she prepared and begins kneading at the dampened bundles of birch leaves.

  “You’re kneading them badly,” says the Vampire Hag, continuing to grumble. “I might not see, but I know it’s bad. You’re running them back and forth in the basin like you’re stirring soup with a spoon, but you have to knead it like it’s dough. What made Murtaza pick you anyway? So careless of him. Honey between the legs isn’t going to satisfy a man his whole life.”

  Zuleikha gets onto her knees to work the leaves. Her body starts feeling hot right away, and her face and chest grow wet.

  “That’s better,” a raspy voice carries from above. “You wanted to hit me with unsoftened bundles of leaves, you good-for-nothing. But I won’t allow you to disrespect me. Or my Murtaza, either. I won’t allow it. Allah granted me this long life to defend him from you. Who else but me will stand up for my little boy? You don’t love him, don’t honor him, you only pretend. You’re a cold, soulless faker, that’s who you are. I feel it, oh, how I feel it.”

  Not a word more about the dream, though. The mean old woman will wear her down all evening. She knows Zuleikha is desperate to hear about it. She’s torturing Zuleikha.

  Zuleikha takes two bundles of leaves trickling with greenish water and goes up to the Vampire Hag on the steaming shelf. Her head enters a dense layer of baking air under the ceiling and begins to throb. Her vision blurs as grains of color flash and float before her eyes.

  There she is up close, the Vampire Hag, stretched out from wall to wall, almost like a landscape whe
re odd hillocks of hundred-year-old flesh and thick landslides of skin seem to have been dropped between protruding bones. Meandering streams of glistening sweat flow along that entire uneven valley, where indented gullies and magnificent rises alternate.

  The Vampire Hag needs to be beaten with leaf bundles in both hands, beginning at the belly. First Zuleikha carefully draws a bundle of leaves along her skin as preparation, then begins thrashing the Vampire Hag with each bundle in turn. Red spots appear immediately on the old woman’s body; black birch leaves fly off everywhere.

  “And you don’t know how to beat me, either. How many years have I been teaching you?” The Vampire Hag raises her voice to outshout the long, lashing swats. “Harder! Go on, go on, you pitiful hen! Warm my old bones! Hit meaner, you good-for-nothing! Get your thin blood moving, so it thickens! How do you love your husband at night if you’re that weak, huh? Murtaza will leave, leave for another woman who will beat and love him harder! Even I can strike harder. Beat me better or I’ll hit you! Grab you by the hair and show you how to do it! I’m not Murtaza, I won’t let you off! Where’s your strength, you hen? You’re not dead yet! Or are you?” The old woman is shouting at the top of her lungs by now and her face lifts toward the ceiling, distorted by fury.

  Zuleikha swings with all her might, striking with the bundles of leaves as if they were an axe, at a body that glimmers in the wafting steam. The birch switches shriek as they split the air and the old woman shudders heavily; broad crimson streaks run across her belly and chest, where blood is swelling into dark grains.

  “Finally,” the Vampire Hag exhales hoarsely, throwing her head back on the bench.

  Zuleikha’s vision darkens and she climbs down the steps from the steaming shelf to the slippery, cool floor. Her breathing is rapid and her hands are shaking.

  “Make it steam more and then get to my back,” the Vampire Hag commands calmly.

  Glory be to Allah, the old woman likes to wash on the lower level. She sits in a huge wooden basin filled to the brim with water, carefully lowers the long, flat bags of breasts that hang to her bellybutton into the basin, and begins graciously extending her arms and legs one at a time to Zuleikha, who rubs them with a steamed bast scrubber, washing balls of grime to the floor.

  Now it’s time for the hair. Her wispy gray braids, which fall down to her hips, need to be unplaited, lathered, and rinsed out without grazing the large, hanging crescent earrings or spilling water into unseeing eyes.

  After rinsing in several pails of cold water, the Vampire Hag is ready. Zuleikha leads her out to the changing room and begins wiping her dry with towels, wondering if the old woman will reveal the mysterious dream to her. Zuleikha has no doubt she already told her son everything today.

  But then the Vampire Hag extends a gnarled finger and pokes Zuleikha hard in the side. Zuleikha yelps and steps away. The old woman pokes again. And then a third time and a fourth. What’s wrong with her? Did she steam too long? Zuleikha jumps aside, toward the wall.

  Her mother-in-law calms down a few moments later. She holds out a demanding hand in a habitual gesture, impatiently motioning with her fingers, into which Zuleikha places a pitcher of drinking water she readied in advance. The old woman takes greedy mouthfuls and the drops run down the deep folds at the corners of her mouth to her chin. Then she swings and forcefully hurls the pitcher into the wall. The pottery clangs loudly, smashing to pieces, and a dark water spot creeps down the logs.

  Zuleikha’s lips move in a brief, soundless prayer. All-powerful Allah, what’s happened to the Vampire Hag today? She’s so worked up. Could she be going soft in the head due to her age? Zuleikha waits a bit. Then she cautiously approaches and continues dressing her mother-in-law.

  “You’re silent,” the old woman utters in condemnation, allowing herself to be dressed in a clean undershirt and baggy wide pants. “You’re always silent, mute. If I had to live with someone who was silent all the time, I’d kill them.”

  Zuleikha stops.

  “You could never do anything like that,” she continues. “You can’t hit or kill or learn to love. Your fury’s sleeping deep inside and won’t ever wake up now, and what’s life without fury? No, you’ll never really live. In short, you’re a hen and your life is hennish.” The Vampire Hag leans back toward the wall with a blissful sigh. “My life, though, has been real. I’m already both blind and deaf but I’m still living, and I like that. But you’re not living. That’s why I don’t pity you.”

  Zuleikha stands and listens, pressing the old woman’s felt boots to her chest.

  “You’ll die soon: it was in my dream. Murtaza and I will stay in the house, but three fiery angels will fly here for you and bring you straight to Hell. I saw everything as it is: how they pick you up and how they hurl you into a carriage and how they carry you over the precipice. I’m standing on the front steps, watching. And you’re silent even then, just mooing like Kyubelek, your green eyes wide open, gawking at me like an insane woman. The angels roar with laughter, holding you firmly under the arms. Thwack of a whip and the earth opens wide, smoke and sparks coming up through the crack. Thwack and you’ve all flown off, disappearing into the smoke …”

  Zuleikha’s legs are weakening and her hands release the felt boots. She leans against the wall, slowly sinking down onto a thin rug that gives little protection from the cold floor.

  “Maybe that won’t come true soon,” says the Vampire Hag, yawning broadly and deliciously. “You know yourself that some dreams are fulfilled quickly, others months later so that I’m already starting to forget them …”

  Zuleikha seems to have lost control over her hands, but she somehow dresses the old woman. The Vampire Hag notices her fumbling and smirks unkindly. Then she sits on the bench and leans resolutely into her walking stick.

  “I’m not leaving the bathhouse with you today. Maybe you don’t have your wits about you after what you’ve heard. Who knows what will come into your head. And I still have a long time left to live. So call Murtaza; let him lead me home and put me to bed.”

  After wrapping her sheepskin coat more firmly around her sweaty, bare body, Zuleikha trudges to the house and leads her husband back. He runs into the changing room without his hat, not shaking off the snow stuck to his felt boots.

  “What happened, Eni?” He runs up to his mother and grasps her hands.

  “I can’t …” The Vampire Hag’s weakened voice suddenly stirs and she drops her head to her son’s chest. “I can’t … no more …”

  “What? What is it?” Murtaza drops to his knees and begins feeling her head, neck, and shoulders.

  Her hands shaking, the old woman somehow unfastens the ties on the front of her smock and pulls at the collar opening. A crimson spot with large black grains of clotted blood is darkening on a light triangle of skin in the gap. A bruise stretches from the opening in her undershirt down toward her belly.

  “Why … ?” The Vampire Hag curves her mouth as if it were a sharply angled yoke for carrying pails and two large, glistening tears roll from her eyes before disappearing somewhere in the finely quivering wrinkles on her cheeks. She presses herself against her son, shaking soundlessly. “I didn’t do anything to her …”

  This brings Murtaza to his feet.

  “You!” He growls indistinctly, drilling his eyes into Zuleikha and groping at the wall next to him.

  There are bunches of dried herbs and bundles of bast scrubbers under his hand – he pulls them off and flings them away. A heavy broom handle finally settles in his palm. He grasps it firmly and raises it threateningly.

  “I didn’t beat her!” says Zuleikha in a stifled whisper, jumping away toward the window. “I never, not once, laid a finger on her! She asked me herself –”

  “Murtaza, ulym, don’t beat her, have pity,” sounds the Vampire Hag’s trembling voice in the corner. “She didn’t pity me, but for her, please –”

  Murtaza hurls the broom. The handle strikes Zuleikha on the shoulder, hurting; her sheepskin
coat falls to the floor. She drops the felt boots herself and darts into the steam room. The door shuts behind her with a bang and the bolt clatters; her husband is locking her inside.

  Pressing her hot face to the small steamed-up window, Zuleikha peers through a dancing shroud of snow as her husband and mother-in-law float to the house like two tall shadows. As the windows on the Vampire Hag’s side light up and then go dark. As Murtaza strides heavily back to the bathhouse.

  Zuleikha grabs a large dipper and scoops water from the basin on the stove; fluffy puffs of steam rise from the basin.

  The bolt clatters again and Murtaza is standing in the doorway in just his underclothes; he’s holding the same broom in his hand. He takes a step forward and closes the door behind him.

  Hurl boiling water at him! Right now, don’t wait!

  Zuleikha is breathing rapidly and holding the dipper in front of herself in outstretched hands as she steps away and presses her back to the wall; her shoulder blades sense a sharp bulge in the logs.

  Murtaza takes another step and knocks the dipper from Zuleikha’s hands with the broom handle. He lurches toward her, throwing her to the lower steaming shelf. Zuleikha’s knees strike it hard and she sprawls on the shelf.

  “Lie still, woman,” he says.

  And he begins beating her.

  A broom on the back isn’t painful. It’s almost like a bundle of birch leaves. Zuleikha lies still, as her husband ordered, but she shudders and scratches the shelf with her nails at each strike so he doesn’t beat her long. He cools off quickly. She was given a good husband after all.