Ignatov’s running to the train station early on the morning of the first day of spring in 1930, gulping the biting, frosty air. The trams aren’t operating yet and it would be a shame to spend an entire five-kopek coin on a cab. It’s a long way from the women’s dormitory where Nastasya lives, so he had to get up early, before the factory whistles.
A mug rumbles in his suitcase, hitting against its plywood sides. His boots crunch on the hard-packed path along the banks of the Bulak, which is long and pierces Kazan like an arrow. The slumbering city is lighting its first lamps and releasing occasional sleepy pedestrians onto the streets. The hoarse voices of half-awake dogs yelp; the first tram pulses somewhere in the distance.
Candle-like minarets – the Yunusov, Apanaev, and Galeev mosques – float, dissolving into the dark-blue morning mist. Denisov did well to come up with that idea back then, raising the red banner like a revolutionary at the former village mosque. Why hadn’t they reached that point yet here in the capital? The Kazan minarets stick out like useless shafts poking meaningless holes at the sky.
Ignatov turns toward the bazaar. The kremlin’s paper-white teeth flare up on the hill. Five-pointed stars shine on the triangular towers like little golden beams. Now that’s genuine beauty, correct beauty – ours.
The station building is like an embossed gingerbread cookie: chocolaty-red, adorned with pilasters and windows, festooned with emblems and decorative urns, strewn with spangles of tiling, and studded with spires and weathervanes. Ignatov winces: the Kazan train station is Russia’s gateway to Siberia, but it looks like a cultural center or some kind of museum. In a word, ugh.
The square in front of the station is already chaotic with people, the crush of carts, and the porters’ brisk cursing. Ignatov slows from a run to a walk and calms his breathing; it’s not fitting for the commandant of a special train to puff like a steam engine himself. He sternly inspects the cursing porters along the way and they grow quiet, too, when they cast sideways glances at his gray military overcoat with the red insignia on his left sleeve. Well, that’s better now.
Ignatov pushes a station door that’s as tall and heavy as a wardrobe. The smell of human sweat, bread, polished weaponry, gunpowder, sheepskin, unwashed hair, machine oil, soldiers’ boots, homeless dogs, turpentine, wood, and medications hits his nose. The air’s so thick you could cut it with a knife. It resounds with shouting, barking, neighing, clanging, bleating, and crashing. A steam engine whistles piercingly outside, drowning out all other sounds for a moment. It’s not morning here. There’s no time of day here. It’s perpetual bedlam. Ignatov wedges his way into the crowd, elbowing and stretching his neck in search of the right office.
“Behind me! Don’t spread out! Stay together! Together, damnit!” A group of recruits in civilian clothing, wearing red armbands and with rifles at the ready, is leading a dozen scared, narrow-eyed peasants dressed in summer clothes – colorful robes and embroidered skullcaps – who are looking all around. The detachment’s leader is shouting himself hoarse, yelling out commands, then he quietly hisses through his teeth, “You are trouble, you Uzbek sheep …”
“In your places! Everybody stay in your places! I’ll shoot anyone who tries to escape on the spot!” bellows a slim soldier on the other side, waving his revolver around and attempting to stop several peasant women on his own. It seems they’d been sitting submissively on their bundles but had suddenly jumped up one after the other and started wailing and jabbering away, maybe in Mari, maybe in Chuvash, when they caught sight of other peasants.
“Step aside!” yell the porters, ramming the stirring crowd with unwieldy carts loaded with rocking mountains of crates containing sharp-smelling oranges and roasted beef. “Provisions for express number two! Step aside!”
Ignatov looks around with the advantage of his imposing height – seeing over the tops of shaggy fur caps, headscarves, fur hats with earflaps, embroidered skullcaps, brimmed hats, and pea coats – to find the door he needs: the office of the head of the Kazan transportation hub. The door slams loudly and incessantly, letting streams of people in and out. The train station’s heart is beating. Swearing and excusing himself, stepping on people’s feet and suitcases, Ignatov makes his way inside and grasps a tall, rickety wooden desk with his hands. Petitioners just like Ignatov push at him from both sides.
Ignatov takes documents from his suitcase: he has a brand-new gray folder that still crackles deliciously at its folds and carries the austere inscription “Case” and the painstakingly formed figures “K-2437.” Inside there are a couple of thin sheets with the names of the dekulakized typed in small print, a little over eight hundred people in total. He holds it out to a small man with infinitely tired red eyes, who doesn’t notice the folder in the midst of the constant shouting and trilling from a telephone.
“Yes, yes!” the little man yells hoarsely into the receiver. “Dispatch the Taishet train! There’s congestion on number seventeen already! Dispatch Chita, too, to the same hounds of hell!”
“Is number ten to Orenburg?” The question carries over heads, from somewhere outside.
“You still here? What do you mean, Orenburg? It’s to Tashkent, to the goddamned hounds of hell, you son of a bitch,” the official barks in response.
Ignatov leans across the desk and jabs the folder like a sword, right at the green uniform. Barely glancing at it, the official detaches a wrinkled sheet of paper from a heap of documents on the desk, with the slanted inscription “Leningrad – remainders” written in purple ink, and shoves it at Ignatov.
“Take these people, too. Sign.”
“But where –” Ignatov doesn’t manage to finish as the telephone explodes in another shrill ring and the official grabs the receiver as if he wants to chew it up.
“What do you mean, a railroad car isn’t expandable?” He’s spitting saliva into the holes of the receiver. “It was stated: ‘Load sixty per car’! The bunks are wide, people will move over a little!”
Ignatov grabs the official by the lapels:
“But where am I going to put more people? What ‘Leningrad remainders’? My train’s already at breaking point.”
“At breaking point?” The official is losing his temper and his voice is becoming surprisingly similar to the telephone’s trill. “You call fifty heads per train car breaking point? So you don’t want sixty like the Samarkand train? Or seventy like the Chita train? And soon it’ll be ninety per car! They’ll ride standing, like horses! Now that’s really the breaking point!” He grabs a stack of disintegrating fat folders from the table and hurls them back down. “There are eight thousand just dekulakized! And they all need to be sent within the week! How about that? And there are new ones every day, every damn day. Soon we’ll be putting them on the rails. And you don’t want to take an extra dozen mouths to feed?”
“Fine.” Ignatov gives in, gloomily scrawling on the transfer slip with a pencil. “Give me your … Leningrad remainders.”
“Don’t you worry,” the official suddenly says quietly, blowing feverishly on the bottom of a large official stamp before imprinting “Kazan Hub” in bold blue ink on the folder. “They’ll be scattered to the goddamned hounds of hell in a few weeks. You’ll be traveling light.”
And he enters the date: “1 March 1930.”
Ignatov decides to drop in on Bakiev before his departure, anyway. He senses anxiety when he enters the building on Vozdvizhenskaya Street. Everything appears to be business as usual: a thorough young soldier is checking passes at the entrance, office doors are slamming, secretaries are clattering up and down marble stairs. But there’s something in the air.
What?
Ignatov slows his pace. There it is, in the young lady from their division who’s running past with eyes as frightened and red as a rabbit’s under thick mascara-coated lashes. There it is, in several unknown soldiers straining hard as they drag heavy boxes with documents. And it’s there in someone’s cautious sidelong glance from behind a column.
Has something happened? Bakiev probably knows.
Without stopping at his own office, Ignatov hurries to Bakiev’s office on the third floor. A long, thin corridor leads there, lined with narrow rectangular doors where the flourishes of brass handles glimmer dimly. It’s usually crowded and smoke-filled here. Now all the doors are tightly closed, as if they’re locked.
Something has definitely happened.
Ignatov strides along parquet that’s come loose and turned dark gray over time; the marred boards squeak shrilly under his boots. He notices one of the door handles slowly dip down and noiselessly go still, then return to its position again, as if someone inside wanted to go out but thought better of it.
What the hell … ?
The door to Bakiev’s office is wide open. Standing beside it are two unfamiliar soldiers with rifles. They look closely at Ignatov, unblinking.
Was it really something to do with Bakiev?
That can’t be.
It can’t be, but something has happened.
Ignatov lowers his gaze. Don’t stop. His feet carry him past the office. The soldiers step back reluctantly, letting him pass. Out of the corner of his eye he notices, in the depths of the office, several overturned chairs on a floor littered with papers, the wide-open mouth of a safe, and a dark gray silhouette by the window, absorbed in reading documents.
Don’t look. Don’t speed up. There’s an exit to the back stairs at the end of the corridor. Use that to go down and get out of here. To the train station! Ignatov strides along the corridor.
“Hey!” rings out a shout behind him.
He stops and turns around. The dark gray silhouette has come out of the office and is watching Ignatov.
“You here to see Bakiev?”
“No, sir.”
“What department are you from?”
“The fifth.” Ignatov doesn’t know why he lies.
Would he really run if he had to? From his own? After all, they’d shoot him like a dog. Why run if you’re not guilty of anything? They’d sort it out and let him go. But what if they didn’t? So should he run anyway?
The silhouette silently goes back into the office. The soldiers turn away. Ignatov opens the door to the back stairs and slips down the steps to the first floor. He leaves the building without looking at anyone. He strides to the train station with his head uncovered but not feeling the cold.
Shame rolls over Ignatov like a hot wave, melting his ears. What were you afraid of, you fool? Your own comrades, doing their job honestly? It’s a mistake about Bakiev, he tells himself. Definitely a horrendous, unbelievable, ludicrous mistake. Possibly because of someone’s slander. Or maybe just a misprint, an absurd mishap. It happens, surnames get mixed up and they take the wrong person. Out of negligence.
Then why are you running away like a coward, like the lowest rat? Why don’t you go back to the ransacked office and shout in the dark gray man’s face: “Bakiev isn’t guilty of anything! I’ll vouch for him!”?
Ignatov stops and squeezes his pointy cavalry hat in his hand. And leave the special train without a commandant? It departs in an hour. They can slap you with desertion for failure to appear at the site of service. And that’s summary execution. He knows because he himself has enforced sentences like this. He pulls his hat down on his head and hurries to the train station.
Everybody knows Mishka Bakiev is a clever person, a Party member, and a revolutionary. He’s our man, to his last drop of blood, to his last breath, Ignatov thinks. They’ll sort this out and let him go for sure. It just can’t be that they wouldn’t release him. Let him go and apologize in front of the entire collective. And punish those to blame.
For sure.
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
“Zuleikha Valieva!”
“I’m here!”
In Zuleikha’s whole life, she’s never uttered the word “I” as many times as she has during this month in prison. Modesty is a virtue so it doesn’t befit a decent woman to say “I” a lot without reason. The Tatar language is even constructed so you could live your whole life without once saying “I.” No matter what tense you use to speak about yourself, the verb will go into the necessary form and the ending will change, making the use of that vain little word superfluous. It’s not like that in Russian, where everybody goes out of their way to put in “I” and “me” and then “I” again.
A soldier by the entrance yells out surnames loudly, painstakingly. Zuleikha’s seeing him for the first time. Is he new?
“Volf Lee … ? Lei … ? Lei-be?”
“How many times have I asked for medical personnel to call me by my first name and patronymic!”
Volf Karlovich has repeated this phrase, word for word, every day at roll call. The other escort guards have already learned it by heart but this one peers into the darkness with surprise. And then, suddenly:
“To the exit! With your things!”
Zuleikha jolts as if she’s been struck by a whip. She presses her little bundle to her chest.
The human mass around her stirs, surges, gapes, and extends hands. “Where? Where are they being sent? And us? Where are we going?”
“The rest are to remain in place!”
Volf Karlovich rises with dignity, brushes himself off, and lets Zuleikha go first. They make their way to the exit, stepping over bodies, heads, sacks, suitcases, arms, parcels, and swaddled infants. The unfamiliar soldier also calls the mullah’s widow and the morose peasant’s family, with the innumerable children, and leads them out of the cell.
After so many days of darkness, light from a kerosene lamp seems as bright as a sliver of sun. After the cell’s stuffy air, the cold air in the corridor intoxicates. Legs tired from constant sitting have slackened and plod falteringly along, but the body is glad to be moving. How long had they stayed in the dungeons? Neighbors confirmed it was several weeks; they’d kept track with the daily roll calls.
They walk along the corridor with escort guards to the front and back. The guards sometimes stop and call for more people from other cells. When they leave the prison, there are already so many they can’t be counted. Villagers, Zuleikha understands as she walks and examines the faces and clothes of her traveling companions. Some of them have fresh, even rosy, faces and were brought in recently. Others, though – like the people from her town – can barely stand. The mullah’s widow has aged and grayed but she’s stubbornly pulling the cat’s empty cage behind her. The peasant’s wife has withered to yellowness and is, as before, clasping two swaddled babies to herself like bundles.
“Finally!” Leibe’s joyful whisper quivers right by her ear. “They’re transferring the infirmary to the rearguard!”
Zuleikha nods. To the rearguard, fine, to the rearguard. She’s seeing Leibe in the light for the first time. His facial features are as graceful as a youth’s, his curly gray hair is bright and silvery, and even his wrinkles are delicate and intelligent. Long, weeks-old stubble covers his cheeks, lending him an air of nobility, and he’s not nearly as old as it seemed in the beginning, probably younger than Murtaza. He’s just dressed oddly, like a pauper, in an ancient, very shabby and moth-eaten blue dress uniform that’s torn in many places, and he’s wearing house slippers without backs on his rag-wrapped feet.
“Bunch closer together! Forward, at a jogtrot – march!” commands the soldier out in front, throwing open the door to the outside.
Daylight hits the face like a shovel. Eyes explode with redness and instantly squint to blink. Zuleikha grabs at a wobbling wall and leans against it. The wall wants to throw Zuleikha off and she finds herself sinking to the floor. She is roused by a shout:
“Stand up! Everybody stand, you bastards! You want to go back to the cell?”
She’s lying on a dirty stone floor by the dungeon exit. Outside the crooked open doorway is a painfully deep-blue March sky and the large, flat dish of the prison yard covered in mirror-like blotches of puddles. Several people are lying there beside her, groaning and pressing their hands to
their eyes. Some are leaning against the wall, others are crouching, kneeling, and mumbling …
“I said forward! At a jogtrot! March!”
One by one, with their eyes narrowed like moles, people find their way outside. Reeling from the fresh air and holding on to one another, they crowd into a loose, limping bunch that keeps falling apart along the way as they lurch along Tashayak Street toward the train station at an uneven jogtrot. Brisk escort guards surround them on all sides. Their rifles are horizontal in their hands, in complete accordance with paragraph seven, instruction 122 bis four (dated February 17, 1930) on “The procedure for escorting former kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements.”
Their eyes quickly grow accustomed to the daylight and Zuleikha looks around. There are trains like giant snakes, with dozens of railroad cars, to her left and right. Underfoot are endless ribbons of train track and rib-like ties, along which stride the hurrying exiles’ worn shoes, felt boots soaked from clinging snow, and mud-smeared boots. There’s a strong smell of fuel oil. A whistle sounds ahead; it’s a train drawing closer. “Let it through!” is the command from up ahead.
The escort guards stop and point their bayonets: Get off the tracks. A huge steam engine breathing hot raggedy fumes is already hurtling toward them, cutting through the air with its fire-red fender. The flywheels are like millstones gone mad. There’s crashing and clanging; it’s frightening. Zuleikha is seeing a train for the first time in her life. Daubs of white paint on the side flash “Forward to happiness!” in uneven letters, heavy air whips at their faces; and then the steam engine speeds away, pulling behind it a long chain of rumbling railroad cars.
A lanky lad of around twelve – one of the sons of the peasant man with many children – unexpectedly takes off. He jumps, catches a handrail, dangles like a kitten on a string, and rides away with the train. An escort guard shoulders his rifle. The crash of the shot merges with the whistle of the engine and a cloud of thick, patchy steam shrouds the train. The din of the train recedes just as quickly as it had arrived. The steam disperses and a small body is left lying on the tracks, lost in a sheepskin coat of the wrong size.
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