When more residents were assigned housing in the professor’s apartment back in 1921, she’d staunchly held the line, carefully selected the most valuable items, and moved them into her own room (lunch and tea services, silver cutlery, heavy candleholders, velvet drapes – what, was she supposed to leave them for these half-literate bumpkins?). She occupied the best table in the kitchen and the largest cabinet in the hallway, in addition to an upper storage cabinet, too. And then one dark autumn evening she took a dully gleaming silver ink set as huge as a pillow, as hefty as a rock, and bearing the personalized inscription “To V.K. Leibe, professor of medical sciences, with the deepest respect of G.F. Dormidontov, rector, Imperial Kazan University,” to the building manager, with no regrets since it was obvious to any fool that you had to be friendly with building managers.
And she began waiting.
By this time, the professor was already shattered by the changes that had taken place in the country. He’d had a rough time during the war between the Bolsheviks and the Czechs fighting for the White Army, he’d fallen out of favor with the new rectors at the university (they changed fairly often during the first years of the Civil War), and his practice at the clinic had been closed. Then one morning Volf Karlovich didn’t leave his room. Nobody noticed his absence. Only Grunya – when bringing a cup of the herbal slop that the professor had become accustomed to drinking for breakfast in the mornings instead of his usual coffee – quietly gasped when she looked into joyful blue eyes unclouded by further earthly sorrows. At first she was scared. Then she realized what had happened – there it was, she’d waited it out. She would be the apartment’s proprietress.
She tolerated the residents, as if they were bedbugs. She simply didn’t know how to poison them. Stepan, who had come into her life a couple of months ago, knew. He decided to begin with the easiest: the professor.
Grunya didn’t question his plans for long. She was already sick to death of taking care of the half-crazed former proprietor. And she was desperate to be Stepan’s little pussycat, lamb, or bunny, and occasionally (forgive me, O Lord, I do sin, I repent …) even his little vixen.
And so the letter was written and dropped in the postbox. Grunya sweated profusely, like a horse, during Stepan’s dictation, tracing out long and tricky words whose meanings she didn’t understand: was bourgeois written with ou or oo? Was German written with e or i? Did spy end in y or i? Is there one r or two in counterrevolution? Is it one word or two? If Stepan is right, they will arrive soon to free up the professorial office with its trio of lovely windows looking out on an ancient park, floors smelling of wax, and heavy walnut furniture. Free it up for Grunya, who’s already been awaiting her turn for happiness for ten long years. And even then – what was it Stepan said that morning? – they weren’t going to spend the rest of their lives huddled in the two little rooms.
Grunya rinses the pot in a basin. It’s suddenly become very quiet in the kitchen. The other women don’t usually converse in her presence; they only exchange glances. But now the silence behind Grunya’s back is thick and unusually heavy. Someone’s soup gurgles, as if it’s choking from agony.
Grunya turns around.
Professor Leibe is standing in the communal kitchen.
A little neighbor girl, who’s always getting underfoot on her ailing tricycle, thrums the bell from fear – ding! – and asks, in the quiet, “Mama, who’s that?”
The women have gone still: one with a ladle, another with an iron, yet another with a rag in her hands. Wide eyes stare at Leibe. But he’s looking only at Grunya.
“Where’s my professorial dress uniform?” he asks in a voice high-pitched with agitation.
Her hand squeezes the rag and soapsuds trickle between her fingers, dripping resonantly into the basin.
“Where’s my professorial uniform? I’m asking you, Grunya.”
“Let’s go have a look in your room, professor,” she says in a voice that suddenly sounds strained. “Let’s go to your room.”
“I’ve already looked there,” Leibe persists. “Give me my uniform at once. I’m late.”
The neighbor women’s eyes, huge from curiosity, probe the professor’s frail figure and shift their gaze to Grunya, then back.
Can it really be that he forgot for ten years, until now? Right now, when they should arrive any day? So Grunya will not be drinking coffee from the professor’s cups, after all – oh no, she will not. And will Stepan want her like this, with one teeny little room in a communal anthill? Grunya’s fat fingers, covered with white suds bursting in the air, turn cold.
“So are you going to give me my uniform?”
In the crosshairs of the neighbors’ attentive eyes, she climbs on a stool and pulls a huge plywood suitcase from the overhead storage cabinet. She rummages around in it and removes from the bottom a wrinkled uniform that’s lace-like from moth holes and white from dust in places.
Leibe laughs joyously and puts it on, stroking it affectionately. The stitching on the sleeve crackles, coming undone and baring zigzags of threads. A blackened button tears off and bounces along the floor, jingling into a corner somewhere.
“I just knew you’d taken it to be cleaned,” the professor says, smiling with satisfaction as he straightens the worn insignia on his chest and turns around.
“Where are you going?” The presentiment of catastrophe dumbfounds Grunya.
“To the university, for a lecture,” he says. He shrugs his shoulders with surprise and leaves, his backless slippers thudding.
“He could have put on shoes,” says one of the neighbor women, finally regaining the ability to speak. “He’ll catch cold.”
Fortunately, Volf Karlovich doesn’t have the chance to catch cold. They take him exactly one minute later, right there, outside the building, as half the apartment’s residents stare out the windows at their strange neighbor’s entrance into the world. He’s just beginning to run down the steps – his feet flying on their own, lightly, as if he were a young man – when other feet, wearing polished black boots, are already running up those very same steps to greet him.
“Volf Karlovich Leibe?” they ask.
“Yes!” he answers, delighted. “You’re here for me? From the university?”
“We are,” they reassure him. “Let’s go to the car.”
“Since when did they start sending such luxurious automobiles for professors?” gushes Volf Karlovich as he settles into the back seat and feels the car’s silky leather interior with childlike curiosity.
People in uniform sit on each side of him, pressing their firm shoulders against him. Leibe smiles and keeps going out of his way to shake hands. The door of the black Ford slams shut and the professor jauntily and cheerily waves a hand to the chauffeur: Let’s go!
The Black Maria carrying away Volf Karlovich has hardly disappeared around a bend in the road, spraying snow out from under its wheels in parting, when a big, heavy padlock clasps its jaws on the door of the professor’s former office. Shoving into his pocket a round, dark bottle that has long been at the ready, Stepan heads off to see the building manager. With a tsarina’s gaze, Grunya surveys the neighbors crowded by the closed door – they want to profit from the professor’s furniture, the jackals! – and Grunya goes to her room without saying a thing.
They won’t take Professor Leibe far, just straight to the State Political Administration’s regional headquarters. For a couple of weeks, investigator Butylkin will work on cracking the German spy who’s posing so successfully as a half-wit, but he’ll give up in the end, deciding to send Leibe to the psychiatric clinic at Arsk Field: they can figure out for themselves if he’s reaping anything or truly just a nut. They’ll be too late, though.
In the middle of February 1930, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic will approve the decree “On the liquidation of kulaks as a class in Tataria.” A week later, it will be determined during an operational meeting a
t the CEC that the pace for collectivization and dekulakization in the republic is horrifyingly low.
And somehow, of its own accord, without the knowledge of the Party leaders and upper ranks of the State Political Administration, it will work out that certain guests of the regional State Political Administration who aren’t especially necessary for investigative purposes will be turned into kulaks. Their cases will be misplaced, gather dust on shelves and safes, and burn in fires. And they themselves will be transferred from solitary confinement and pretrial detention to dungeons in a transit prison crowded with the dekulakized. By mid-March, Red Tataria will already be in third place in the country for its pace of collectivization.
Volf Karlovich Leibe will land in the legendary transit prison building, too. He won’t be the slightest bit surprised; he’ll likely even be glad since he’d started to miss people during his ten years of seclusion. Only one question will trouble him slightly: is all well with Grunya?
Grunya’s life will take a favorable turn. She’ll drink coffee from the professor’s cups in the mornings. True, the cups themselves will turn out to be extraordinarily inconvenient: they’re small and fragile, just trouble. A year later, Stepan will free up another room for them, and two years later, the regional arm of the Joint State Political Administration will move to Black Lake, into the building next door. Stepan will think a little and then he’ll start work there. His career will come together and very soon they won’t need to free up the next room using their well-established means because they’re allocated luxurious living space of their very own on Pochtamtskaya Street.
Grunya will grow bored after becoming the rightful proprietress of a large and empty new apartment, since there’s nobody to battle and Stepan works day and night. And so when, at the age of forty-six, she discovers her pregnancy, Grunya will decide to carry the child to term. She will pass away during labor and the doctors from the university clinic will just throw up their hands in distress. It was too tough a case.
KAZAN
A shaggy snout bares its yellowed teeth and wails, shaking its inside-out lips. Zuleikha squeezes the reins tighter. May Allah protect me, what is this hellish monster?
“A camel!” cries someone behind her. “A real one!”
The outlandish beast swings its master, who’s sitting between the humps and wearing a colorful quilted robe, side to side as it floats past. A sharp smell of spices trails after them.
The sledges are traveling along a central street. The caravan has formed and straightened out so the vehicles are riding close together past buildings of brick and stone, painted light blue, pink, and white, like huge carved jewel boxes. Lots of little turrets tower over the roofs; there are weathervanes blossoming with tin flowers and roof tiles glistening like colorful fish scales under spots of snow. Decorative flourishes creep along pediments and tickle the heels of half-naked men and women (what shame this is, Allah!) who bear heavy cornices on their muscular shoulders. Railings curl like iron lace.
Kazan.
Young ladies in little boots with heels (how do they not fall off those!), servicemen in mouse-colored military overcoats like Ignatov’s, public servants chilled to the bone in patched coats, middle-aged women wearing huge felt boots and selling little pies (the smell, the wonderful smell …), portly nannies with children swathed in shawls on wooden sledges … In their hands are folders, briefcases, tubes, reticules, bouquets, and cakes …
The wind tears a pile of sheet music from the hands of a skinny young man wearing glasses, hurling it into the sorrowful face of a cow that a frail peasant is leading past on a rope.
The hulk of a tractor for agitational propaganda rolls along, its heavy wheels rumbling as it tows a large, cracked bell, around which winds a snake-like red cotton banner: “We will reforge church bells into tractors!”
Dirty slush on the road explodes into a crooked fountain under the hooves of a cavalry detachment rushing past, and under the wheels of shiny black automobiles tearing along toward it, driving in the opposite direction.
A fiery red tram flies along with a deafening clang; its brass handles blaze and there are faces clustered in its glassless windows. A small pack of waifs flit away from a gateway and hang on the handrail with frenzied shrieks. The furious conductor curses and waves his fists; a policeman is already running, cutting across the road, and blowing his whistle.
Zuleikha squints. A lot of buildings, a lot of people. All loud, vivid, fast, and strong-smelling. This is understandable since it’s the capital. Kazan is generously throwing its treasures into the stunned exiles’ eyes before they’ve had a chance to recover.
The red-and-white spire of the Church of Saint Varvara is solemn, the aperture of its bell tower window forlornly empty, and there’s an inscription painted in yellow above the entrance: “Greetings to the workers of the First Tram Depot!” There’s the governor-general’s former home, as well decorated as a torte and now housing the tuberculosis hospital. The ice on Black Lake rings with children’s laughter. The columns of Kazan University, each as thick as a century-old oak, are a delicate white.
The city’s kremlin has sharp little towers like heads of sugar. Instead of a clock, there’s a large, stern face – with wise, narrowed eyes under falconine brows and a mustache like a broad wave – gazing out at Zuleikha from a round opening on Spassky Tower. Who is it? He doesn’t resemble the Christian god, whom Zuleikha once saw in a picture that the mullah had shown her.
Then there’s an unexpected shout: “We’ve arrived!” How could that be? Where had they arrived? Zuleikha looks around, confused. In front of her is a squat, dirty white building with tiny squares of windows that form a chain along one side and a tall stone wall around it, three times her height.
“Down you go, Green Eyes!” says Prokopenko, puckering his cheeks in a smile and winking, his gaze probing for the lamb under the burlap in the sledge: Is it in one piece?
Zuleikha squeezes her bundle tightly and jumps to the ground. Bayonets already bristle to greet her; a live corridor of young junior soldiers leads to a small open metal door. In there, then.
Prokopenko takes Sandugach by the bridle and the horse neighs shrilly, jerking under an unknown hand. Zuleikha drops her bundle and rushes to the horse, pressing her face into her dear muzzle.
“Not allowed!” is the anxious cry behind her and something sharp, a bayonet blade, presses at her back.
“Come on, now,” says Prokopenko’s smiling voice. “Let her say goodbye. Why begrudge that?”
“I’ll count to three!” utters the stern, anxious voice. “One!”
Sandugach smells of healthy sweat, hay, the shed, and milk – of home. She exhales joyfully as she nestles against her mistress and the warm dampness of her delicate nostrils settles on Zuleikha’s cheek. Zuleikha sticks her hand in her pocket and removes the poisoned sugar. The large, heavy lump weighs on her palm like a stone. Murtaza used foresight on everything: he’s already headed off to his forefathers, but his thoughts are still directing his loyal wife.
“Two!”
Zuleikha opens her sweaty palm and raises it to Sandugach’s face. The horse nods gratefully and joyfully. The foal jumps out from under her legs. Pushing its mother away and greedily stretching its long neck, it snuffles and smacks its outstretched lips, hurrying to take the treat.
“Three!” The bayonet is driving in, painfully, between her shoulder blades.
Zuleikha clenches her fingers and lowers her hand with the sugar into her pocket. She takes the broken-off chunk of bread from her other pocket and sticks it instead into the trusting outstretched lips of Sandugach and the foal.
Forgive me, Murtaza, for not fulfilling your order. I couldn’t. I disobeyed you for the first time in my life.
Ignatov’s dissatisfied voice is already behind her. “What’s going on? Why the delay?”
Zuleikha takes her bundle from the ground and ducks through the open door.
For a long time, she takes small steps through a bare, ice
-coated courtyard, then along a narrow corridor, following an ungainly young soldier who’s striding forward, his soot-blackened kerosene lamp illuminating lumpy stone walls trickling with moisture. Another’s hobnail boots thud behind her. Zuleikha draws her shoulders together from the chill. Even the cold here is particular – it’s frigid, damp, and clinging. Voices carry from behind heavy doors that have tiny windows with crosses in their gratings: Russian, Tatar, Mari, and Chuvash speech; songs, cursing, a child’s crying …
“Could use some water, boss! Need to drink …”
“… I must ask you – no, I demand an attorney! A Soviet court should …”
“I want a woman, commander. Bring that one to me, huh?”
“… I beg you, the telephone number is 2-35. Just say you’re calling on behalf of Pavlusha Semyonych …”
“I’ve remembered! I’ve remembered everything! Send for Investigator Ivashov! And tell him Sidorchuk will sign the confession …”
“… and you will burn in the fires of Gehenna until the end of time …”
“… I’m begging you! Aspirin! The child has a fever …”
“On Deribasovskaya Street they’ve opened a new bar. It’s loud with beer, and there, my dear, is where the jailbirds are …”
“… Let me go, sons of bitches! Bastards! Scum! Ahhhh!”
A door creaks heavily and swings open. The young soldier nods: In here. Zuleikha steps into an inky darkness that breathes with the smell of bodies long unwashed; the cold metal door nudges her forward. A lock clicks outside. She listens to many mouths breathing as she waits for her eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. A dull light trickles from a window with bars and Zuleikha begins to discern silhouettes.
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