Ignatov didn’t understand how it was possible to love a woman. One could love great things: revolution, party, one’s country. But a woman? Anyway, how could the very same word express one’s relationship with such different entities, as if you were placing the Revolution and some woman on two pans of a scale. It ends up being silly. Even Nastasya – as alluring and winsome as she was – was still a woman. He could be with her for a night or two, half a year at most, to amuse the man in him, and that would be it, enough. What kind of love was that? Only feelings, a bonfire of emotions. It’s nice while it burns but when it dies down, you blow away the ash and live on. And so Ignatov didn’t use the word love when he spoke; he didn’t want to defile it.
Bakiev summoned Ignatov abruptly one morning. “Vanya, my friend,” he said, “the real assignment you’ve been waiting for is here. You’re going to a village to fight enemies of the Revolution – there are still a lot left there.” Ignatov’s heart went still from joy: on a horse again, in battle again! They gave him a couple of Red Army men as subordinates and a detachment of recruits. And she – she, the adored one, in a white sheepskin coat and on a chestnut horse – was among them. Fate, for certain, was bringing them together.
He dropped in on Ilona before leaving, parting with her coolly. She immediately burst into tears when she saw the coldness in his eyes: “You don’t love me, Ivan?” He got so angry his teeth even clenched. “Loving is for mothers and children!” he said and left immediately. “I’ll wait for you, Ivan, do you hear? I’ll wait!” she called after him, as he went. In short, she put on a show.
Nastasya’s another matter. This one wouldn’t wring her hands and sigh. This one knows why men need women and women need men.
There she is, riding by: smiling broadly, unashamed, looking him straight in the eye. Her sharp little teeth pull a mitten off her plump hand and she ruffles the horse’s mane with her tender fingers, running her hand through the strands. Patting him.
Ignatov feels sudden hot shivers running from the back of his head, past the nape of his neck, and flowing down his spine. He averts his gaze, frowning; it’s not fitting for a Red Army man to think about women on the job. She’s not going anywhere. And he spurs his horse, galloping to the front of the caravan.
They’ve been riding for a long time. Along boundless hills that were once Kazan Governate and are now Red Tataria, they see the tail ends of other caravans stretching just as slowly and inexorably toward the capital – white-stoned Kazan. The rear of their own caravan is probably looming in front of someone else, but Ignatov doesn’t know because he doesn’t like looking back. Every now and then they ride through villages where the people bring bread from their houses, thrusting it into the hands of the dekulakized, sitting dejectedly on sledges. Ignatov doesn’t forbid this: let them. They’ll eat up less state-issued chow in Kazan.
Yet another hill has been left behind but Ignatov has already quit counting them; he’s lost track. And then, in the monotonous scrape of sledge runners, he hears Prokopenko’s sudden loud shout, “Comrade Ignatov, come here!”
Ignatov turns. The caravan’s even ribbon is torn in the middle. The forward part continues moving slowly ahead but the rear part is standing still. The dark figures of cavalrymen bustle around at the gap, waving their arms, their horses prancing nervously.
Ignatov rides closer. There it is, the reason: the sledge with the tiny woman with the big green eyes. The harnessed horse is standing, head down, and the foal has settled in by her belly, hurriedly sucking on a maternal udder, groaning from time to time; it had gotten hungry. The road is only wide enough for one sledge, so those behind can’t ride past.
“The mare’s on strike,” complains Prokopenko, at a loss, his black brows knitted. “I’ve already tried all kinds of things with her …”
He earnestly tugs the horse by the bridle but she shakes her mane and snorts – she doesn’t want to go on.
“We have to wait until she’s done feeding,” the woman in the sledge quietly says.
The reins lie on her knees.
“Women wait for their husbands to come home,” Ignatov snaps. “We have to move.”
He jumps to the ground. From his overcoat pocket he takes bread crusts sprinkled with pebbles of coarse gray salt that he’d saved for his own horse. He thrusts them at the stubborn beast, who smacks her glistening black lips and eats. There now, watch it … He strokes her long muzzle, which is prickly with stiff gray hairs.
“A caress works on a horse, too,” says Nastasya, who’s ridden up and is smiling broadly, gathering the semicircles of her cheeks into dimples.
Ignatov tugs at the bridle: Come on, sweetie. The horse finishes chewing the last crust and obstinately lowers her head to the ground: I’m not moving.
“You won’t budge her,” chimes in the taciturn Slavutsky, pensively rubbing the long thread of the scar on his face. “She won’t go till she’s ready.”
“She won’t go. That means …” Ignatov tugs harder, then sharply jerks the bridle.
The horse neighs plaintively, showing her crooked yellow teeth and pawing at the ground. The foal hurriedly sucks at the udder, looking sideways at Ignatov with eyes like dark plums. Ignatov swings his arm and beats the mare’s flank with the back of his hand: Move it! The horse neighs louder, shakes her head, and stands. To the flank, again. Move it, I’m telling you! Move it! To hell with you, you damned demon! The horses standing nearby are agitated, adding their wary voices and rearing.
“She won’t go,” Slavutsky stubbornly repeats. “Even if you beat her to death. She’s a mother, that’s all there is to it.”
He’s harping on it, that officer ass. He came over to the Red Army ten years ago and his way of thinking still isn’t theirs, isn’t Soviet.
“We’ll have to give in to the mare, won’t we, comrade Ignatov?” Nastasya raises her brow, stroking her horse’s neck, calming him.
Ignatov grabs the foal’s flank from behind and tugs, attempting to tear him from the udder. The foal’s legs twitch like locusts and he slips under his mother’s belly, to the other side. Ignatov topples backward into a snowbank; the foal continues feeding. Nastasya laughs melodiously, her breasts pressing against her horse’s shaggy mane. Slavutsky turns away, flustered.
Cursing, Ignatov rises to his feet and brushes the snow from his hat, overcoat, and breeches. He flaps his arm at the sledges that have gone ahead:
“Stop! Stop!”
And now the cavalrymen are galloping to catch up with the front of the detachment: Stop! Rest until further command!
Ignatov takes off his pointy hat, wipes his reddened face, and casts angry glances at Zuleikha.
“Even your mares are counterrevolutionaries!”
The caravan rests, waiting for the month-and-a-half-old foal to drink enough of his mother’s milk.
After a lush, dark blue evening has fallen on the fields, there’s still a half-day of travel left to Kazan. They have to spend the night in a neighboring canton.
Denisov, the local chairman of the rural council, a stocky guy with the sturdy gait of an experienced sailor, welcomes them cordially, even warmly.
“We’ll arrange a hotel for you, highest class! The Astoria! Well, no, all right, we’ll do better, the Angleterre!” he promises, his smile generously baring large teeth.
Sheep are bleating deafeningly now, pushing, jumping on each other, shaking their floppy ears, and kicking their thin black legs. With his arms spread wide, Denisov drives them all into a pen behind a long cotton curtain that divides the enormous room into two halves. The last nimble little lamb is still racing around, drumming its little hooves sharply on the wooden floor. The chairman finally grabs it by its curly scruff and flings it in with the others; satisfied, he looks around, kicks smelly sheep pellets with his boot, and hospitably throws his arms open so the stripes of a sailor’s jersey flash in the gap at his collar:
“So, what was I telling you about this hotel?”
Ignatov cranes his neck
and looks around. Bright light from a kerosene lamp illuminates a high wooden ceiling. Long narrow windows circle the round cupola. There are shallow waves of half-erased Arabic inscriptions on dark, pitch-covered walls. Inside cavernous niches gleam bright squares, the vestiges of recently removed tapestries with quotations from the Koran.
At first Ignatov doesn’t want to spend the night in a former mosque – blast it, this hotbed of obscurantism. But then he gets to thinking – actually, why not? Denisov’s a smart fellow. He’s got things figured out. Why let the building stand idle for no reason?
“There’s room for everyone,” the chairman continues boastfully, drawing the colorful curtain across. “Sheep in the women’s half, people in the men’s. It’s a relic, of course. But it’s convenient, that’s a fact! At first we wanted to take out the curtain but then decided to leave it. You can count on us having guests here each and every night.”
The mosque was recently transferred to the collective farm. Even the sharp smell of sheep manure can’t stifle its distinct aroma, maybe of old rugs, maybe of dusty books still remaining in the corners.
The shivering deportees are bunched by the entrance, scared and gawking at the curtain, behind which the sheep continue to bellow and push.
“Find a place to settle in, dekulakized citizens,” says Denisov as he opens the stove door and throws in a few logs. “In the beginning, my collective farm women were afraid of going into the men’s side, too,” he whispers conspiratorially to Ignatov. “A sin, they said. But then it was fine – they got used to it.”
The mullah in the karakul coat is the first to enter the mosque. He walks up to the high prayer niche and kneels. Several men follow him. As before, the women crowd at the threshold.
“Lady citizens,” the chairman shouts cheerfully from the stove, the fire’s golden sparkles gleaming in his dark pupils. “Those sheep, they’re not afraid. Follow their example.”
Raucous bleating carries from behind the curtain in response.
The mullah rises from his knees. He turns toward the exiles and signals welcomingly with his hands. People enter timidly, scattering along the walls.
Prokopenko, who’s crouched by a heap of junk in the corner, has unearthed a book and is picking at its pretty fabric cover decorated with metallic patterns – he’s drawn to learning.
“I ask you not to take the books,” says the chairman. “They’re awfully good for starting fires.”
“We won’t touch anything,” says Ignatov, looking sternly at Prokopenko, who tosses the book back on the pile, shrugging his shoulder indifferently. He doesn’t want it so terribly much anyway.
“Now listen, comrade representative,” Denisov says, turning to Ignatov. “Your little soldiers won’t be stealing a lamb for dinner, will they? I have a shortfall in the morning whenever there’s a dekulakized caravan. We’ve lost half the flock already, just in January! That’s a fact.”
“Collective farm goods? How could we!”
“Well, fine …” Denisov smiles and jokingly threatens Ignatov with a strong, gnarled finger covered in black calloused spots. “Because you can’t keep an eye on it all the time …”
Ignatov slaps Denisov on the shoulder to calm him: Simmer down, comrade! How about that: a former Petersburg sailor (Baltic fleet!) and Leningrad laborer (a shock worker!), he’s now one of the twenty-five thousand who’s followed the Party’s call to improve the Soviet countryside (a romantic!). In short, by all accounts Denisov’s one of us, Ignatov thinks, and yet he still regards his own pretty poorly.
Nastasya is walking through the mosque with a leisurely, lazy stride, scrutinizing the deportees huddled in the corners. She pulls her shaggy fur hat from her head and her heavy, wheaten braid cascades down her back toward her feet. The women gasp (in a mosque, in front of men, in front of a live mullah, with her head uncovered!) and press their hands to the children’s eyes. Nastasya approaches the heated stove and throws her sheepskin coat on it. The pleats on her uniform tunic are like tight musical strings that pull away from her high-set bosom under a wide belt that’s so tightly caught at her waist that it seems it will burst with a twang at any minute.
“We’ll put the children here,” says Ignatov, not looking at her. Am I showing pity again? he thinks meanly. Then he reassures himself – they’re still children even if they’re kulak children.
“Fine, I’ll freeze,” Nastasya cheerfully sighs and picks up her coat.
“Let me arrange some straw for you, you gorgeous thing.” Denisov winks at her.
Jostling, and with stifled shouts, the youngsters somehow settle around the wide stove, some on top of it, others beside it. The mothers lie down on the floor around it in a broad, solid ring. The rest seek out spots for themselves along the walls, on the rags lying in the corner, and on the debris of bookshelves and benches.
Zuleikha finds a half-burned scrap of rug and settles on it, leaning her back against the wall. The thoughts in her head are still as heavy and unwieldy as bread dough. Her eyes see but as if through a screen. Her ears hear but as if from afar. Her body moves and breathes but as if it’s not her own.
She’s been thinking all day about how the Vampire Hag’s prediction has come true. But in such a scary way! Three fiery angels – the three Red Hordesmen – had taken her away from her husband’s household in a carriage but the old woman stayed in the house with her adored son. What the Vampire Hag had been so joyful about and wanted so much had come about. Would Mansurka figure out to bury Murtaza alongside his daughters? And the Vampire Hag? Zuleikha had no doubt the old woman wouldn’t last long after her son’s death. All-powerful Allah, everything is at your will.
She’s sitting in a mosque for the first time in her life and in the main half at that – the men’s half – not far from the prayer niche. It’s obvious that the Almighty’s will is in this, too.
Husbands allowed women into the mosque reluctantly, only for big holidays, at Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Murtaza would steam himself thoroughly in the bathhouse every Friday and hurry off – ruddy, with his beard carefully combed – to Yulbash’s mosque for Friday prayers, after placing a green velvet embroidered skullcap on his head, which he’d shaved to a rosy sheen. The women’s part of the mosque, which was in the corner behind a thick curtain, was usually empty on Fridays. The mullah instructed the husbands to convey the content of the Friday conversations to their wives, who’d stayed to look after their households, so they’d become stronger in the true faith and not lose their bearings. Murtaza obediently fulfilled the instruction. After coming home and settling in on the sleeping bench, he would wait until the low rumbling of the flour mill or the clinking of dishes quieted in the women’s quarters, then he’d say his usual “I was at the mosque. I saw the mullah,” through the curtain. Zuleikha waited for Murtaza to say that every Friday because it meant far more than the individual words. It meant that everything in this world has its routine and the way of things is unshakable.
Tomorrow is Friday. Murtaza will not go to the mosque tomorrow.
Zuleikha looks around for the mullah. He’s continuing to pray, sitting facing the prayer niche.
“Officers on duty to their posts,” commands Ignatov. “Others to sleep.”
“And if someone doesn’t feel like sleeping, comrade Ignatov?” The full-bosomed woman who shamelessly bared her head in the house of worship has found herself an armload of straw and is standing, embracing it.
“Wake-up will be at dawn,” Ignatov responds curtly and Zuleikha is somehow pleased that the commander is so strict with the shameless woman.
Nastasya sighs loudly and tosses the armload of straw on the floor near Zuleikha.
The officers on duty arrange themselves on an overturned bookcase by the entrance, their rifles gleaming brightly in the half-darkness. “Rise at dawn, awake till dawn, a sailor’s guard is never down!” The chairman salutes them in parting, wishing the sheep and travelers a good night. Ignatov gives a sign and the kerosene lamp’s little orange f
lame shrinks so only the very end of the wick smolders, barely noticeable in the dark.
Zuleikha gropes in her pocket for bread, breaks off a piece, and chews.
“Where are you taking us, commissar?” the mullah’s deep-toned, singsong voice rings out in the dark.
“Where the Party’s sending you, that’s where I’m taking you,” Ignatov responds just as loudly.
“So where is your Party sending us?”
“Ask the all-knowing Allah, let him whisper it in your ear.”
“Not everyone will last the journey. You’re taking us to our death, commissar.”
“Well then, you must try to survive. Or ask Allah for a quick death, so you don’t suffer.”
The anxious deportees whisper among themselves:
“Where? Where?”
“It couldn’t be Siberia?”
“But where else would it be? Exile is always there.”
“Is that far?”
“The mullah said we might not last the journey.”
“Allah! If only we can make it!”
“Yes. If we make it, we might survive –”
Rifles clank, reverberating, as the officers on duty load them before bed. Murmuring voices go quiet. The stove’s warmth creeps through the mosque; eyelids fill with sleepiness and shut. As Zuleikha is drifting off, she sees that the mullah’s wife has let her beloved gray cat out of the cage and is feeding it from her hand, shedding large tears on its soft, striped back. “Zuleikhaaa!” The Vampire Hag’s voice can be heard from far away, as if it’s coming from underground. “Zuleikhaaa!”
Zuleikha Page 9