Zuleikha

by Guzel Yakhina

  While the iron’s hot and true.

  The song of a working person, Zuleikha decides, a blacksmith or smelter. It’s already clear this person is riding behind them along the forest road and will soon catch up to them, out from the trees. How old is he? Probably young: there’s a lot of strength, a lot of hope, in his voice.

  For this will be the war to settle,

  Our fate for good and all;

  It’s time for humankind’s last battle

  And the Internationale.

  In the distance, dark silhouettes are flickering swiftly between the trees. Now a small cavalry detachment appears on the road, too. At the front is a man with an easy, straight posture, and it’s clear from afar that he’s neither a blacksmith nor a smelter but a warrior. When he rides closer, the broad green stripes on his gray military overcoat become visible; on his head there’s a pointed, coarse hat with a reddish-brown star. A Red Hordesman. He’s the one singing.

  It’s up to us, the laboring masses

  Of the world to rise and fight;

  The rule of landlords surely passes

  And we’ll seize what’s ours by right.

  Allah endowed Zuleikha with excellent vision. In the bright sunlight, she discerns the Red Hordesman’s face, which is uncommonly smooth for a man: it’s really like a girl’s, with neither mustache nor beard. His eyes seem dark under the brim, and his even white teeth look like they’re made of sugar.

  And once that mighty lightning flashes

  To strike the proud and cruel,

  The sun will blaze down on their ashes

  When the proletariat rule.

  The Red Hordesman is already very close. When he squints from the sun, crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes run under the long, coarse fabric earflaps of his pointy hat. He’s shameless, openly smiling at Zuleikha. She lowers her eyes as a married woman should and buries her chin deeper in her shawl.

  “Hey, boss, is it far to Yulbash?” the Red Hordesman asks, riding right up to the sledge and not taking his eyes off Zuleikha. She senses the hot, salty smell of his horse.

  Murtaza doesn’t turn; he keeps urging on Sandugach.

  “Gone deaf or something?” The rider presses his horse’s sides lightly with his heels and overtakes the sledge in two bounds.

  Murtaza suddenly slaps Sandugach’s back with the reins. She leaps abruptly forward, knocking her chest into the soldier’s horse, so that it neighs with alarm, stumbles off the road, catches its back legs in a snowdrift on the roadside, and flounders in the snow.

  “Or gone blind?” The Red Hordesman’s voice is ringing with rage.

  “The little man’s scared. He’s hurrying home to hide under Mama’s skirts.” The cavalry detachment has caught up to the sledge, and a swarthy little man, whose upper lip is raised in amusement, revealing a bright gold tooth, brashly eyes the sledge. “They’re a nervous bunch!”

  How many of them are there, anyway? No more than you could count on all your fingers. The men are solid, sturdy. Some are in military overcoats, some just in sheepskin coats pulled in at the waist with a broad reddish belt. Each has a rifle on his back. The bayonets glisten in the sun; it’s dazzling.

  And one’s a woman. Lips like bilberries, cheeks like apples. She sits squarely in the saddle, head raised high, bosom pushed forward, allowing herself to be admired. Even under the sheepskin it’s obvious that chest would be enough for three. A picture of wholesomeness.

  The horse that was forced off the road finally makes its way back and its rider grabs Sandugach by the bridle. The sledge stops and Murtaza tosses aside the reins. He hides his sullen expression and doesn’t look at the cavalrymen.

  “Well?” the soldier asks, threatening.

  “Oh, they don’t speak a word of Russian here, comrade Ignatov,” calls out an elderly soldier with a long scar across half his face. The scar is white and very even, like a stretched rope. From a saber, Zuleikha guesses.

  “Not a word. So then …” Ignatov attentively examines the horse, the colt hiding under her belly, and Murtaza himself.

  Murtaza is silent. His shaggy fur hat is pulled over his forehead, screening his eyes. Curly little clouds of dense steam float out of his whitened nostrils, covering his mustache with a raggedy frost.

  “Well, you are a gloomy one, brother,” utters Ignatov, pensive.

  “His wife gave him a talking-to!” The swarthy soldier with the gleaming gold tooth winks at Zuleikha, first with one eye, then the other. The whites of his eyes are as murky as the liquid in oatmeal and his pupils are small nuggets. The members of the detachment laugh. “Tatar women, oh, but they are harsh! You won’t get away with anything! Isn’t that right, Green Eyes?”

  Her father called her Green Eyes when she was a child. That was a long time ago. Zuleikha no longer thinks about the color of her eyes.

  The detachment laughs louder. Ten pairs of audacious and mocking eyes scrutinize her intently. She uses the edge of her shawl to cover her cheeks, which are burning.

  “They’re harsh but not especially pretty,” the busty cavalry-woman adds lazily, turning away.

  “How could they compare to you, Nastasya!” whoop the Red Hordesmen.

  Zuleikha hears how hoarse and labored her husband’s breathing is behind her back.

  “As you were!” Ignatov resumes scrutinizing Murtaza. “So where’d you go so bright and early, boss? And with your wife, too. I see you weren’t chopping up any wood. What’d you lose in the forest? Come on, don’t look away. I see you understand everything.”

  The horses stamp their hooves and snort loudly in the quiet. Zuleikha senses but doesn’t see that the furrow on Murtaza’s forehead is deepening, cutting into his skull, and the dimple in his chin is trembling, like a bobber over a fish caught on a hook.

  “They were digging mushrooms out from under the snow,” says the soldier with the gold tooth, lifting Zuleikha’s skirt a little with his bayonet; the spades’ blades peer out from under sacks. “But they didn’t gather much!” He picks up one of the sacks with the point of his bayonet and shakes it in the air.

  The brigade’s snickering swells into waves of laughter. A few large yellow grains fall from the sack to Zuleikha’s skirt and the laughter ends abruptly, as if it had been cut by a knife.

  Looking down at her hem, Zuleikha takes off a mitten and hurriedly collects the grains in her fist. The cavalrymen circle the sledge, silently surrounding it. Murtaza slowly moves his hand toward the axe tucked in his sash.

  Ignatov tosses his reins to a cavalryman who’s ridden over, and jumps to the ground. He walks up to Zuleikha, takes her fist in both hands, and forces it open. Up close, it’s obvious his eyes aren’t dark at all but bright gray, like river water. Beautiful eyes. And his fingers are dry and unexpectedly hot. And very strong. Zuleikha’s fist yields, unclenching. On her palm are long, smooth grains that gleam in the sun like honey. Quality wheat seed.

  “Mushrooms, then,” Ignatov says softly. “So maybe, you kulak louse, you were out digging in the forest for some other reason?”

  After sitting like a statue, Murtaza suddenly turns sharply toward the sledge and looks Ignatov in the eye with hatred. His stifled breathing gurgles in his gullet, and his chin shakes. Ignatov unfastens the holster on his belt, reaches for a black revolver with a long, hungry barrel, points it at Murtaza, and cocks it.

  “I won’t give it up!” Murtaza wheezes. “I won’t give up anything this time!”

  He swings the axe. Rifles click all at once. Ignatov presses the trigger. A shot blasts and the echo spreads through the forest. Sandugach neighs with fright. Magpies drop from the spruce trees and hurry off into a thicket, screeching loudly. Murtaza’s body collapses onto the sledge, his feet toward the horse, face down. The sledge shudders heavily.

  The rifles stare at Zuleikha, the black barrels gleaming under the needles of their bayonets. A blue puff of smoke rises from the revolver. There’s a bitter smell of gunpowder.

  Ignatov, stunned, is loo
king at the body prone on the sledge. He wipes his upper lip with the hand that’s holding the revolver and stows the weapon in his holster. He takes the axe that fell from its owner’s hand and swings, plunging it into the back of the sledge, just a finger’s length from Murtaza’s head. Then he leaps into his saddle, digs his heels into the horse, and speeds off down the road, full tilt, without looking back. Snow sprays out from under the horse’s hooves like dust.

  “Comrade Ignatov,” the soldier with the gold tooth shouts after him. “What about the woman?”

  Ignatov only waves: Leave her!

  “So much for the mushroom picking, Green Eyes,” the soldier says, pushing out a broad lip in conclusion.

  The cavalrymen hurry off behind their commander. The detachment flows around the sledge like waves around an island. Sheepskin coats with fleecy collars, shaggy fur hats, gray overcoats, and the red stripes on their trousers float past, speeding after the horseman in the pointy-topped cavalry hat. The clatter of hooves soon fades in the distance. Zuleikha is left by herself, in the middle of the forest’s stillness.

  She sits motionless with her arms folded on her knees and her small fist squeezing the wheat grains. Murtaza’s powerful body is sprawled out on the sledge, freely stretching his arms and legs, head comfortably turned on its side, long beard spread out along the boards. He’s sleeping, just as he always does on his bench, taking up the entire space. There’s not even enough room for small Zuleikha to fit alongside him.

  The wind plucks at the treetops. Pine trees creak somewhere in the forest. A couple of hours later, the foal is hungry and finds his mother’s teat with his lips and suckles milk. Sandugach inclines her head, contented.

  An unhurried sun drifts along the horizon then slowly sinks into large snow clouds wafting in from the east. Evening is falling. Snow pelts down from the sky.

  Without receiving her master’s usual shout and slap on the rump with the reins, Sandugach takes a timid step forward. Then a second and a third. The sledge begins to move, creaking loudly. The horse strides along the road to Yulbash, and the happy, sated foal skips alongside. The reins lie on the empty driver’s spot. Zuleikha is sitting on the sledge, her back to the horse, her unseeing gaze looking at the forest that remains behind.

  On the road, where the sledge stood all day, is a deep-red spot about the size of a small round loaf of bread. Snow falls on the spot, quickly covering it.

  Later, no matter how hard she tries, Zuleikha cannot remember how she got home. How she left the horse in the yard, still harnessed, and grasped Murtaza under the arms and dragged him inside the house. How heavy her husband’s huge, unwieldy body was, how loudly his heels knocked against the front steps.

  She fluffed his pillow nice and high, just how he loves it, undressed him, and laid him on the sleeping bench. Lay down alongside him herself. They lay like that a long time, all night. The wood Murtaza had thrown in the stove that morning had burned down long ago and the logs of the cooling house crackled resonantly from the cold. The window that was broken yesterday had already burst and shattered with a flat, glassy jangle, and a mean wind mixed with prickly grains of snow whipped through the square window’s bare frame. And still they lay there, shoulder to shoulder, their wide-open eyes looking at the ceiling, which was first dark, then thickly flooded with white moonlight, then dark again. For the first time, Murtaza didn’t send her off to the women’s quarters. That was utterly surprising. A feeling of immense surprise would be the only thing from that night that remained in Zuleikha’s memory.

  After the edge of the sky has turned alarmingly scarlet, foretelling a chilly dawn, there’s a knock at the gate. The knock is loud, angry, and insistent. A tired master of the house knocks meanly and relentlessly like that when returning home and discovering someone has locked his house from the inside.

  Zuleikha hears the noise – it’s far away and indistinct, as if it’s coming through the feather mattress. But she doesn’t have the strength to stop staring at the ceiling. Let Murtaza get up and open it. It’s not a woman’s job to open doors at night.

  The bolt on the gate clanks, letting in uninvited guests. The yard fills with voices and the neighing of horses. Several tall silhouettes float through a yard that’s still dark. The door in the entrance hall – the door into the house – bangs.

  “Well, now, this is cold! Did everybody here die or something?”

  “Get the stove going! We’ll freeze, damn it.”

  The clatter of hobnail boots on frozen boards. Floorboards squeaking loudly, alarmingly. The clang of the stove damper. The scratch of a match and the sharp smell of sulfur. The crackle of a fire flaring in the stove.

  “Where are the people who live here?”

  “We’ll find them, don’t fret. Have a look around for now.”

  The wick in the lamp flickers as it flares up: crooked black shadows dance along the walls and a soft, warm light is already beginning to fill the house. A broad-nosed face ruined by large pockmarks leans over Zuleikha. It’s Mansurka-Burdock, chairman of the rural council. He’s holding a kerosene lamp right next to his face, making the round pox scars seem as deep as if they’d been hollowed out by a spoon. He’s looking purposefully at Zuleikha. He shifts his gaze to Murtaza’s thinned face, scrutinizes the black clotted hole on his chest, perplexed, and whistles, at a loss.

  “Zuleikha, we came to see your husband …”

  An ornate little frozen cloud blossoms by Mansurka’s mouth. He speaks Russian with a heavy accent but briskly, coherently. Better than Zuleikha. Mansurka’s become adept at chatting with the Red Hordesmen.

  “Get up, we need to talk.”

  Zuleikha doesn’t know if this is real or a dream. If it’s a dream, why does the light hurt her eyes so much? If it’s real, why are the sounds and smells carrying from so far away, as if from the basement?

  “Zuleikha!” Mansurka is shaking her by the shoulder, first lightly, then harder. “Get up, woman!” he shouts loudly and angrily, finally in Tatar.

  Her body responds to the familiar words like a horse to a slap of the reins. Zuleikha slowly lowers her feet to the floor and sits up on the sleeping bench.

  “There you go.” Mansurka switches back to Russian, satisfied. “Ready, comrade representative!”

  Ignatov is standing in the center of the house, his hands tucked into his belt and boots placed far apart. Without glancing at Zuleikha, he takes a wrinkled sheet of paper and a pencil from his rigid leather map case. He looks around, annoyed.

  “What is this anyway? How many houses have I seen without a table or bench? How am I supposed to write a report?”

  The chairman hurriedly thuds his palm on the lid of the top trunk by the window:

  “You can do it here.”

  Ignatov somehow settles in on the trunk; the linen kaplau wrinkles up under his large body and slips to the floor. He breathes on his hands to warm them, licks the pencil’s point, and scratches it along the paper.

  “They haven’t yet cultivated socialist life,” Mansurka mutters in an apologetic tone, holding on to the trunks, which are attempting to slide in various directions. “Heathens, what can you expect from them?”

  There’s a sudden crash of smashing pots and the ringing of copper basins falling in the women’s quarters. The hens are clucking in a frenzy. Someone’s tangled in the folds of the curtain, swearing loudly and colorfully. The soldier with the gold tooth springs out from behind the curtains in a cloud of feathers and down. He has one hen under each arm, loudly squawking in alarm.

  “Well, how about that! Green Eyes!” he says joyfully when he sees Zuleikha. “May I?” Without stopping or releasing the fluttering chickens from his armpits, he neatly pulls the lacy web of kaplau out from under Ignatov’s feet with a magician’s quick motion. “I’ll take these trunks a little later.” He finally backs toward the door under Ignatov’s angry gaze and disappears, leaving a swirl of feathers behind him.

  Ignatov finishes writing and places the pencil on the
completed report with a thud:

  “She can sign it.”

  The sheet of paper on the trunk is white, like a folded, embroidered towel.

  “What is this?” Zuleikha slowly shifts her gaze to Mansurka. “What’s it for?”

  “How many times have I said that you have to call me comrade chairman! Is that clear?” Mansurka menacingly raises his chin, which shows through his reddish beard. “You teach them a new life, but they just don’t … Look, we’re evicting you.” He glances around, dissatisfied, at the bed where Murtaza’s powerful body lies, dark. “Just you. As a kulak element of the first category. Active counterrevolutionary. The Party meeting ratified it.” Mansurka’s short finger pokes at the paper on the trunk. “And we’re requisitioning your property to use for the rural council.”

  “Don’t confuse me with newfangled words. Just tell me, comrade Mansurka, what’s going on?”

  “That’s for you to tell me! Why isn’t your Murtaza’s property collectivized yet? Are you going against state power, as individual peasant farmers? I’ve tried convincing you so much my tongue’s going to fall out. Why isn’t your cow at the collective farm?”

  “There is no cow.”

  “What about the horse?” Mansurka nods at the window: Sandugach is outside, still harnessed and standing in the yard with the foal circling her legs. “Two horses.”

  “But they’re ours.”

  “Ours,” he mimics her. “And the flour mill?”

  “How can you have a household without one? Remember how many times you yourself borrowed ours?”

  “That’s just the thing.” His already-narrow eyes squint. “Leasing equipment used for labor. A sure sign of the dyed-in-the-wool, deep-rooted, irredeemable kulak!” He squeezes his small hand into a mean, wiry fist.

  “Pardon me, excuse me …” says the soldier with the gold tooth, who’s returned and is now pulling a stack of pillows in embroidered cases out from under Murtaza’s head, which thuds against the bench. He strips curtains from the windows and embroidered towels from the walls and carries a huge heap of linens, pillows, and quilts out of the house in his outstretched arms. Unable to see anything in front of him, he kicks open the creaking front door.