The mother can only silently open her mouth before her arms droop like rope. The bundles of her babies nearly fall to the ground. Zuleikha grabs one, the peasant man grabs the other. The older children huddle against their father’s legs in fright.
“We’re moving along. We’re not loitering!”
Steel fingers of bayonets point at the track. One of them touches the woman on the shoulder: You were ordered to move forward! The peasant man takes his wife by the shoulders. She doesn’t resist and her head is twisted back like a dead hen’s, her gaze fixed on her son’s small body sprawled between the rails. Still not closing her mouth, she obediently walks away with everyone, placing her feet on the ties. She walks for a long time.
Then she lets out a guttural scream and thrashes in her husband’s firm grasp, swinging her arms and legs to no avail; she wants to go back. But another train is already flying toward them, roaring, and her scream is drowned out by a powerful iron chorus of flywheels, pistons, hammers, railroad cars, rails, wheels.
Zuleikha hugs the soft, warm bundle in her arms. This baby that doesn’t belong to her is pink like a doll, with chubby cheeks, a tiny button nose, and delicate fluff instead of eyebrows. Snuffling in its sleep. Only two months since it was born, no more. Not one of Zuleikha’s daughters lived to this age.
The exiles flow along the tracks in a long, wide stream. Another stream, smaller and made up of cold people under-dressed for the weather, is running toward them from the train station. And diagonally across the rails there rapidly strides a lone figure wearing a sharp-pointed hat and carrying a gray folder in his hand. They all gather by a large railroad car that was knocked together from crooked, poorly planed boards painted reddish orange.
“Stop!” the man with the folder quietly says.
Zuleikha recognizes him. It’s Red Hordesman Ignatov, Murtaza’s killer.
The convoy’s leader is already hurrying toward him, whispering something in his ear, and pointing at the peasant’s wife, who continues to wail. Ignatov listens, nodding from time to time and gloomily looking around at the crowd that’s clustered before him. His gaze meets Zuleikha’s. Does he recognize her? Or does it only seem so?
“Listen to me carefully!” he finally says. “I’m your commandant …”
She doesn’t know what a commandant is. And he said “your.” Does this mean they’ll be together a long time?
“… and I’m taking you, dekulakized citizens, and you, former people citizens, to a new life …”
Former people? Zuleikha doesn’t understand: former people are dead people. She looks around at the handful of people who’ve just joined them. Pale, tired faces. They’re shivering, huddling close to one another and dressed for autumn, wearing frivolous woolen coats and silly thin shoes. A cracked pince-nez’s frame gleams gold and an absurd ladies’ hat with a veil shines like a bright emerald spot so it’s immediately obvious that they’re city people. But not dead, no.
“… a life that may be difficult and filled with deprivations and ordeals but also with honest labor that benefits our fervently beloved motherland –”
“But where to? Where are you taking us, commander?” someone from the crowd insolently interrupts.
Ignatov shoots glances at their faces, seeking out the obnoxious one. He doesn’t find him.
“You’ll find out when you get there,” he says over their heads, with authority. “Well, then …”
“And if I don’t get there?” a daring voice rings out again, challenging.
Ignatov takes a breath. Then he pulls a pencil stub out of his shirt and thoroughly wets it with saliva.
“What’s the surname of the one killed while escaping?” he asks loudly.
After hearing the answer, he opens the folder and crosses one name off the list.
“Already, one won’t get there.” He raises the folder and waves it around in the air. “Does everybody see?”
A bold, crooked line on a sheet tattered by a typewriter floats over the crowd.
Ignatov clears his throat.
“You drank the blood of the laboring peasantry for a long while. The moment has come to atone for your guilt and prove your right to a life in this complex present time of ours as well as in a wonderful bright future that will come about very, very soon, no doubt about it …”
He uses words that are difficult and unfamiliar to Zuleikha. She understands little, other than Ignatov’s promise that everything will end well.
“My task is to transport you – unharmed and in one piece – to that new life. Your task is to help me with that. Any questions?”
“Yes!” one of the bunch of “formers” hurries to say, in an apologetic tone. He’s a stooped man with sorrowful eyes; the skin underneath them sags like sacks, like melted wax, and Zuleikha realizes he’s a drunk. “If you please. Will food be provided during the travel? You must understand that for so many weeks we’ve already –”
“And so, food …” utters Ignatov forebodingly, walking right up to the stooped man, whose trembling nostrils instantly turn ashen. “Be thankful that you haven’t been shot! That the Soviet authorities continue thinking about you, taking care of you! That you’ll go in heated railroad cars with your loved ones!”
“Thank you,” the frightened man babbles to the green patches on Ignatov’s chest. “Thank you.”
“You’re going there to be liberated from the fetters of the old world, toward new freedom, one might say!” Ignatov continues thundering, striding along the ragged line of people, whose heads are shrinking into their shoulders. “And all you’re thinking about is how to stuff your belly! You’ll have … hazel grouse in champagne sauce and chocolate-covered fruit!”
He waves abruptly to the escort guard by the railroad car: Let’s go! The other guard draws open the door, which squeals as it slides to the side so the car reveals its rectangular black maw.
“Welcome to the Grand Hotel!” smirks the guard.
“With the greatest pleasure, citizen chief!” A nimble little man with dog-like mannerisms and a persistent gaze is the first to leap up into the railroad car, throwing a foot full force into the high opening – and revealing the fraying edges of his baggy trousers – and then disappearing inside.
A dangerous person, from prison, guesses Zuleikha. You need to stay far away from him.
And now it’s the exiles elbowing one another as they climb into the carriage to find places. The peasant men grunt, take a bounding run-up, and their feet push off, springing up. The peasant women groan, lifting their felt boots into masses of skirts, somehow clambering up, and pulling small, squealing children after them.
“And what about those who aren’t able to do this like monkeys? Will you carry them in your arms?” a calm voice asks amid the clamor.
It’s a stately lady with a high hairdo – a twisted tower of half-gray hair – and that bright-green hat with the veil. She’s standing with her mighty arms raised, as if she’s inviting someone to take her in their arms. A woman like that can’t be lifted, decides Zuleikha. She’s too heavy.
Ignatov stares right at the lady, who doesn’t avert her gaze and just lifts a thin eyebrow: And so? The old man with the cracked pince-nez tugs at her shoulder, frightened, but she obstinately brushes off his hand. Ignatov motions with his chin and a guard drags a thick board out of the clamps on the railroad car door and places it like a gangway from the railroad car to the ground. The lady heads into the car, graciously nodding her hat in Ignatov’s direction. Her large feet in laced shoes tread decisively and relentlessly; the board bends and shakes.
“Votre Grand Hôtel m’impressionne, mon ami,” she tells the guard, and he freezes, bewildered at hearing unfamiliar speech.
Zuleikha cautiously follows, carrying the bundle of her things in one arm and a sleeping child in the other. And how could this be, Allah, to contradict a man, a military man at that, and the chief at that. An old woman but brave. Or maybe she’s brave because she’s old? But going up on the board truly is
easier.
The door squeals as it slides along its runners behind her. It’s dark again, like in the cell. The heavy clang of one bolt, then a second. And that’s it: one heated cattle car, numbered KO 310048 – freight capacity twenty tons, designed for up to forty humans or ten horses – is fully loaded with fifty-two deportees and ready for departure. Exceeding the planned load by twelve heads can be considered insignificant because, as the head of the transport hub in Kazan wisely noted that morning, soon they’ll be going with ninety per car, standing like horses.
By the time Zuleikha has helped the unfortunate peasant and his wife, who’s numb from grief, to settle in by putting the bundles with the infants to bed on the bunks as comfortably as possible – she was very sorry to tear herself away from that warm parcel, with its sweet baby smell – and found space for the restless older children, all the places have been taken and there’s no squeezing in because everyone’s packed the two-tiered bunks so closely. As before, Leibe helps out. He leans over from somewhere and pulls her up toward the ceiling by the hand, into the thick darkness of the second tier.
“I must ask you to observe your assigned place in the ward,” he grumbles.
Zuleikha gratefully agrees as she feels her way to squeeze in between the professor and a wall that’s cold as a rock. She bows her head slightly so she doesn’t hit it on the frost-covered ceiling. She pulls the shawl from her head and lays it between her leg and Leibe’s bony hip; it’s sinful to sit so close to an unrelated man. It’s even shameful for the forefathers three generations away, as her mother would have reproachfully said. Yes, Mama, I know. But your rules were only good for the old life. And we have – what was it Ignatov said? – a new life. Oh, what a life we have now.
The prison man with dog-like mannerisms pulls out a match that’s hidden deep in an inconspicuous crevice in the wall. He strikes it on the sole of his shoe and bends over a pot-bellied iron stove. It clatters with coal and then there’s a hot fire in it, crackling, flaring up, and flooding the car with a warm, quivering light.
Zuleikha looks around and sees plank walls, plank floor, and plank ceiling. In the center of the car – like a warm heart – is the crooked little stove, part of it rusted in patterns. Along the sides are bunks darkened with time and worn to a dull brownish shine by hundreds of arms and legs.
“Why so glum, you lot?” rasps the prison man, flashing his big, gray teeth. “Take it easy, I’ll be your minder. I won’t let anyone harm you: I’m an honest vagabond. Everybody knows Gorelov.”
Gorelov’s hair is long and shaggy, like a woman’s. Heavy, greasy locks keep falling over his face, turning his gaze wild and brutish. He walks along the bunks with a loose gait that’s almost like a dance, and he peers into gloomy faces.
“It’d be curtains for you without a minder here, my dear people. It’s a long way to ride.” And then he’s singing loudly, drawing out syllables: “Hush dogs, there’s no jumping trains! The screws will beat you for our pains …”
“How would you know, anyway?” The stooped drunk with the sorrowful eyes (“Ikonnikov, Ilya Petrovich, artist,” as he would later introduce himself to his neighbors) has sat down next to the little cast-iron stove, which is already white-hot, to warm his cold hands. “Maybe they’ll give us a lift as far as the Urals and throw us off.”
Gorelov walks up to the little stove. He tosses an assessing glance at Ikonnikov’s hunched figure, wearing a coat like a sack and scarf around his neck like a noose. Gorelov takes off a dirty shoe that’s falling apart at the seams and extends it: Hold this. He unwinds his foot wrap for a long time then finally takes out a cigarette butt hidden between his toes. He places it in his mouth, lovingly twists the foot wrap back on, and puts on his shoe. He lights the cigarette butt from the stove and exhales smoke in Ikonnikov’s face.
“How I know,” he says, continuing the conversation as if nothing happened, “is that I’m an old hand. I’ve done two hitches, pal. I’ve done Sakhalin time and been pounded into Solovki grime.”
Ikonnikov coughs and turns away from the smoke. Gorelov stands and scowls threateningly all around the silenced railroad car, challenging anyone to doubt him.
“This isn’t freedom of the free. Procedures need to be observed,” he says didactically. “But I’ll be looking after you so nobody does anything foolish.”
Gorelov catches a louse behind his ear with an abrupt twitch, crushes it on his fingernail, and flings it into the stove.
“The bulls have got you by the horn,” he sings, taking up a new tune, his broad grin revealing a large, gleaming gold crown. “You’ve had it boys, now take your turn. You’ll soon be sorry you were born. You’re going where there’s no return …” He’s standing in the center of the car, hands in his pockets, his shoulders thrust back like wings. “Or is there someone here who can’t wait and is just burning for the eternal ‘no return’?”
Wary faces watch silently from the bunks. Gorelov takes a step behind the stove and knocks a wooden lid aside with his foot. Looking around belligerently, he unfastens his pants and releases a loud, taut stream into an open hole in the floor. Several women gasp, and stare at the long arc glistening in the firelight, entranced and unblinking. Their husbands tug at their sleeves and they look down, covering their children’s eyes.
Zuleikha comes to her senses and turns away, too. The sound of it rings in her ears, making her face warm in shame. So that’s the latrine? And what are women to do? In the cell, they went to a pail when necessary, though it was dark there. But here …
Gorelov smiles victoriously, flicking off the drops and in no hurry to tuck his manhood back into his pants.
“Herpes genitales, if I’m not mistaken,” says Leibe. The professor’s voice rings out beside Zuleikha as he looks pensively at Gorelov’s bared flesh. “Three parts essential oil of lavender, one part sulfur. Rub it on three times a day. And no sexual contact until full recovery.” He nods decisively, in firm agreement with himself, and then turns away indifferently.
Gorelov’s face shifts and he hastily crams his wrinkled member back in his pants and leaps over to Leibe, scrambling up to the second tier like a monkey.
“Take care of that mug of yours, buster,” he hisses into the vacant face, rubbing his fingertips on Leibe’s dress uniform as if it were a napkin. “And thank your lucky stars that I’m the minder here. Otherwise you might get your bell rung –” Gorelov lets out a yell: he’s stabbed his finger on the small badge crookedly pinned to the lapel of Leibe’s uniform.
The railroad car abruptly begins moving, with a rumble.
“We’re on our way! We’re on our way!” The bunks boil over with excited whispers.
The hardened criminal casts a malevolent glance at Leibe and returns to his place.
Beside Zuleikha – right under the roof – there’s a small window, the size of the one on the stove, and it’s lined with even metal bars coated with velvety gray frost. On the other side of the grating she sees the central railway platform and the huge red station building with the lacy letters “Kazan” solemnly floating by. People are hurrying somewhere, surrounded by gleaming bayonet blades. A pair of horses neigh under militiamen. Women selling food bellow about snacks.
“We’re headed for Siberia, not Moscow,” someone notes.
“And where did you want them to send us? The Black Sea?”
The steam engine whistles long and loud, hurting the ears. A thick cloud of milky steam shrouds everything, creeping into eyes and mouths. When it dissipates, black skeletons of trees are already flying outside the window, silhouetted against white fields.
Zuleikha presses a finger to the grating: the frost on it is melting. The frost on the ceiling is beginning to drip, too, warmed by the stove and human breath.
They make themselves at home quickly. It doesn’t involve much since they have few things and very little space. The peasants are bunched at one end of the railroad car, the Leningrad “formers” at the other. Zuleikha and the professor have ended u
p in the “city” half.
They introduce themselves. The tall lady in the green hat bears a name befitting her stature: Izabella. She has a long patronymic, too, and a puzzling double surname that Zuleikha doesn’t remember. Izabella arranges her gray hair into a tall style each morning. Sometimes she recites poems that are intelligent, incomprehensible, and very beautiful, in Russian and occasionally, surprisingly, in French, which rumbles like the train wheels. She never recites the same poem twice. The railroad car listens. Zuleikha doesn’t understand how so many varied, complex, and very long lines can fit inside one head, and a female one besides. Izabella’s face remains calm and majestic, even when she’s catching lice under her arms or parading toward the latrine, which they’ve screened off with a piece of fabric.
Her husband, Konstantin Arnoldovich Sumlinsky, is a withered old man with a sparse, triangular gray beard; he mostly stays silent. He wakes early in the morning and takes up his place by the crack in the door to wait for the first rays of sunlight, under which he places his only book, open, to read. He smiles at some pages with an approving nod, wags a finger at others as he shakes his small head in distress, and even argues with others. When he reaches the last page, he slams the book shut, pensively looks at the cover, with its picture of a small, gray grain of wheat, and opens it up again. Sometimes he and his wife speak at length in a whisper, but Zuleikha doesn’t understand a single phrase, even though the conversation is in Russian, since they use such difficult words. He’s a strange person and Zuleikha is rather afraid of him.
She takes a disliking to the stooped Ikonnikov. Everything about him – the wrinkled blue-gray bags under his eyes, the fine trembling of his long fingers, his small fidgeting motions, and even how he loudly and lengthily swallows with his large, sharp Adam’s apple – indicates he’s a drunkard. Mama always said a drunk person was worse than a beast.
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