Zuleikha

by Guzel Yakhina

  Zuleikha likes Gorelov least of all, though. Nobody likes him. The car’s minder holds everyone firmly by the throat. He always divides up the food himself, measuring out slimy porridge and herring soup with his own chipped mug, cutting bread with a coarse, stretched string, and mercilessly thrashing people’s outstretched fingers with a spoon: Don’t get ahead of the minder. He even pours out the drinking water from a half-rusty bucket covered with a crust of ice. He takes double portions for himself, for his labor. The peasant men look at him askance, keeping quiet. Gorelov is the first to leap from the bunks when the door opens for the daily inspection and the imperturbable Ignatov, his gaze severe and arrogant, enters the car surrounded by soldiers. The minder stands at attention in front of the commandant, poking a tense hand at his own forehead and loudly and diligently reporting that no incidents have taken place. Ignatov listens reluctantly, his body half-turned, and for some reason Zuleikha likes that he twitches his thin nostrils ever so slightly as he does. Sometimes Gorelov is summoned to the commandant’s car; he returns quiet, mysterious, and even dreamy – maybe they fed him there.

  They always want to eat. The belly groans, demanding. It clenches like a fist, then straightens and swells. Food is meager on their journey and it inflames rather than consoles the innards. Zuleikha remembers her mother’s tales of the insatiable mythical giantess, Zhalmavyz, who eats everything that comes her way. And Zuleikha herself has become just the same. As voracious as a locust. As greedy as a turkey hen. She hadn’t even known such hunger could exist. Her vision darkens from it; that’s how bad things are. The bolt on the railroad car only needs to jingle a bit and her stomach immediately starts growling and churning: Are they bringing something to eat? Most often it turns out that no, it’s just another inspection or a head count or a train station doctor undertaking a hurried, embarrassing examination.

  Things are easier when they’re moving. Zuleikha watches another life fly by in the tiny rectangular grated window – sparse little forests, small villages sliding from knolls, wrinkled ribbons of brooks, steppes resembling tablecloths, and the brush-like forest – and forgets about hunger. But she remembers it again during stops.

  Sometimes she catches her neighbor’s attentive gaze upon her. Leibe watches – intently, for a long time, and unblinking – as she painstakingly licks her shallow bowl squeaky clean. And then he’ll suddenly give her his half-eaten chunk of bread or the remaining porridge in his dish. Zuleikha refused at first, but then she stopped. Now she just thanks him and accepts, and listens, listens to his endless muddled speeches that might be stories of medical practice or scraps of diagnoses. She soon notices that the book lover, the sullen Konstantin Arnoldovich, seems to want to join in their strange discussions, too. He needn’t bother, she thinks possessively. The professor isn’t about to start sharing his food with that bookworm, too!

  She hasn’t been able to discover if this train car has its own iyase, its own house spirit. It ought to; how could it not, since people are living here? Then again, how would it feed itself? There aren’t even dead lice here – some people eat them themselves, others burn them in the stove – never mind breadcrumbs. She listens for it at night: the sounds of clattering or creaking under a house spirit’s shaggy paws. No, there’s nothing, it’s quiet. The train car is soulless, dead.

  It’s very cold in the railroad car and they’re given little coal. Candles are issued occasionally for two cloudy-glassed lamps and then it’s bright for a short while.

  Vestiges of their predecessors are scattered all around the train car, like greetings from the past. While investigating all the crevices and knotholes in the planks, Gorelov discovered an entire cigarette during the first half-hour of their journey. They wiped a layer of rusty dirt off the stove and read an impassioned inscription scratched with a nail that said, “Burn the scum!” The bunks are mottled with messages containing the names of loved ones, dates, oaths promising to not forget and not forgive, poems, dedications, threats, prayers, raunchy profanity, a delicate female profile, quotes from the Bible, Arabic squiggles … The children from the large peasant family found a small cream-colored shoe while playing under the bunks, set on an elegant heel with a thin leather sole; it was for a girl of around five or six. Gorelov wanted to pull out the silk laces (anything could come in handy) but was too late because Ikonnikov, who was usually reserved, abruptly flung the shoe into the stove. A horrible smell of singed leather lingered in the car for a long while after.

  Their route is long. It seems unending. The names of cities, settlements, and stations string together, one after another, like beads on a thread.

  Kenderi, Vysokaya Gora, Biryuli, Arsk …

  Sometimes their train races swiftly along the railroad through wind and blizzards, sometimes it lazily drags its way along sidings and branch lines, searching for a holding area, and sometimes it stands motionless in that same holding area for weeks, covered with drifted snow, its wheels freezing to the rails.

  Shemordan, Kukmor, Kizner …

  Sometimes at small stations a second special train running close by will flash in the crevices of the railroad car door.

  “Laish!” shout the peasants, who are usually quiet. “Mamadysh! Sviyazhsk, Shupashkar!”

  “We’re from Lipetsk!” flies out in response.

  “Voronezh! Taganrog! Shakhty!”

  “From near Arzamas!”

  “From Syzran!”

  “We’re from Vologda!”

  Sarkuz, Mozhga, Pychaz …

  One time after standing in a holding area yet again, the train unexpectedly sets off in the opposite direction: Pychaz, Mozhga, Sarkuz … The peasants laugh from joy, praying incessantly: “We’re going home, heaven be praised, home!” They ride for almost a day. Then they come to their senses as they begin heading east again to Sarkuz, Mozhga, Pychaz …

  “Nobody needs us,” Ikonnikov says then. “They’re knocking us around like …”

  He falls silent.

  “Yes, yes,” says Izabella, cheering him. “You’re absolutely right, like shit on a shoe. Just like it!”

  And they roll on.

  Agryz, Bugrysh, Sarapul …

  The children begin dying first. All the children of the unfortunate peasant who had so many ran off to the other side, one after another, as if they were playing tag – first the babies (both at once, on the same day) then the older ones. His wife went after that; by then, she wasn’t distinguishing the boundary between this world and the other very clearly. The peasant man pounded his head against the carriage wall that day; he wanted to crack open his skull. They dragged him away, tied him up, and held him until he calmed down.

  Yanaul, Rabak, Turun …

  They bury the dead along the tracks in one common pit. They dig it themselves using wooden shovels, with the escort guards’ rifles aimed at them. Sometimes they don’t have enough time to finish digging graves or cover the corpses properly with crushed stone before the order “To the train!” booms. The bodies are left to lie in the open, with the hope that kind people will turn up on the next special train and scatter something over them. They themselves always scatter something when their train stands by open graves like that.

  Bisert, Chebota, Revda …

  Ignatov never gets used to the tea-glass holder. He drinks hot water from a good old aluminum mug and lets that thing – fat around the middle, with even steel lacework gleaming on its gut and a daringly smooth handle – just stand on the table. The faceted glass in the holder trembles invitingly when they’re in motion, sometimes bouncing: it’s reminding him of its existence. But it seems silly, shameful, and simply impossible to drink from such a ridiculous object. After Sarapul, Ignatov gives it to the escort guards in the next compartment so they can amuse themselves with it. He wants to give them a disgustingly soft striped mattress with an unusually smooth cover (was it silk or something?) but then thinks better of it; they’d ruin the goods, the clods. He rolls it up and somehow stuffs it on the high shelf under the
ceiling. He sleeps better on a wooden bench; it’s what he’s used to.

  There’s a lot he doesn’t like in the commandant’s compartment. There’s the lackey-like, soundless, and subservient sliding of the door (right-left, right-left …) and the foppish scalloped curtains with thin, barely noticeable stripes (let’s assume bare windows are no good, but why the frills?) and the flawlessly clean, large mirror over the voluminous funnel-like tank that holds water for hand washing (he only looks when necessary, in the morning, while shaving). There’s so much happening all around him! But there are lacy things and tea-glass holders here …

  Serving as the train’s leader is not the easy job he thought it would be. They’ve already been traveling for two months. Which would be fine if they were actually moving, but more often they’re just waiting. They’re constantly on edge, like people in an asylum, because they’re either urgently pressing ahead (“You out of your mind or what, commandant? Look, everything’s backed up! Hand over your papers and push off, push off now and free up track five for me!”) or holding their horses, waiting in a siding again for a week (“There weren’t any orders with your name on them, comrade. You’ve been told to wait, so wait. And don’t come see me every hour! We’ll find you ourselves if anything comes up …”).

  He loves those moments when the train gathers speed with a deep, ferocious rumble, rattling along the rails as if it were quivering with anticipation. He wants very much to yank the window down, stick his head outside, and put his face into the wind. He has difficulty enduring long days of painful anticipation at small stations in out-of-the-way places denoted on the map in italics.

  Like now, gazing through a cloudy pane of glass covered in thick dust. Immobile black fields with small white spots (remnants of snow) spread outside. Ignatov testily taps his fingers on the varnished tabletop.

  There were fifteen deaths during one eight-day stretch of idle time.

  He’d noticed long ago that people die during the waits. Either the loud knocking of the wheels urges on tired hearts or the swaying of a railroad car calms them. But fact is fact: there’s hardly an idle time when a couple of surnames aren’t crossed out in the gray “Case” folder.

  Eleven old people, four children.

  When you’re carrying nearly a thousand souls, there’s nothing surprising in a few dying, right? The elderly from old age, some from illnesses. But children, too? Yes, that’s right, from weakness. It can’t be helped; it’s the road.

  “Comrade commandant?” Polipyev, the supply manager, puts his head inside the door with a coy knock. “So, lunch? Shall I bring it?”

  And then the aroma of thoroughly cooked barley flavored with a touch of salted pork fat floats into the compartment. Crystals of salt sparkle on the long, pearly grains. There’s a thick slice of spongy bread on the side.

  Ignatov takes the plate from the tray. Polipyev stands meekly, arms at his sides. He used to attempt to help the commandant by spreading a linen napkin evenly on the table and placing the plate nicely in the center, setting the silverware properly (spoon with knife, to the right; fork to the left) and then the salt and pepper … But this isn’t a commandant, he’s a beast: “If I see those knickknacks one more time …” Well, be my guest if you want to chow without etiquette. Gulp your porridge down with just a spoon.

  “Comrade Ignatov,” says Polipyev, lifting the empty tray in front of his chest like a shield, “what’re we going to do with the lamb?”

  Ignatov looks up with a heavy, silent gaze.

  “April’s almost here, I’m afraid it won’t keep. The ice box is good, of course, but you can’t reason with the weather.” Polipyev lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Maybe we should use it all? I could make any number of things out of it – country cabbage soup and navy-style macaroni. Even consommé with profiteroles … So, soup, main course, and jellied meat from the bones: we’ll eat for a week. Why have we just been eating barley since we set out from Kazan? Your fighters are looking at me with daggers in their eyes. They’ve promised to eat me if I don’t give them meat.”

  “They won’t eat you without an order.” Ignatov bites off some bread and takes the spoon in his hand, chewing menacingly. “If the lamb spoils, though, then absolutely I’ll see to it that they eat you.”

  Polipyev displays a vague smirk that could be a smile or an acknowledgement of understanding, plus submissive agreement.

  “And you!” Ignatov pokes his spoon at Polipyev’s chest. “Can you tell me how much longer we’ll be traveling? A week? A month? Half a year? What am I going to feed you – you personally! – if we eat everything up now?”

  “Well, what of it. Let it stay in the ice box, then,” sighs Polipyev and disappears outside the door.

  Ignatov throws his spoon.

  Lamb!

  Canned meat and condensed milk and butter. The refrigerator in the commandant’s railroad car is stuffed with provisions. All these riches are intended for staff: escort personnel, the two stokers, and the engine driver. Well, and the commandant himself, of course. According to the plan, the deportees were to be fed at stations. And this was written in black and white in the special instruction for agencies of the transport division of the State Political Administration: “Throughout the special train’s itinerary, provide uninterrupted supply of hot water to those evicted and organize feeding sites at stations serving hot food at least once every two days.” Well, where are they, those feeding sites?

  Ignatov realized at the very first station that this was going to be a problem. Special trains with dekulakized people stretched all along the railway, one after the other, and some were stuck for a long time on the track between stations, awaiting instructions. “Where will I find you all those provisions?” the station chief gently asked Ignatov. “Be grateful I’m giving you hot water.” Ignatov expressed gratitude that hot water was offered so meticulously.

  But there’s not enough food for the deportees. Ignatov is glad when he manages to scare up porridge: wheat, oat, barley, occasionally spelt or broken grain. It’s porridge when it can’t be thinned very much. They thin soups mercilessly, for example, several times, sometimes even with icy water. Ignatov has tried arguing with the station officials about this, but it’s no use – they even make accusations. “What, do you pity them or something?” they’ll ask. “I’m responsible for them!” he’ll snap. “Who am I going to hand over at our destination point?” “And where is your destination point?” they say, waving him off.

  And truly, where is it? He doesn’t know. Apparently nobody knows. At yet another station, after waiting a week or even two in a holding yard, Ignatov would receive the invariable instruction: “Proceed to point such and such, and wait until further notice.” He proceeds. Arrives. Hurries to the station chief to report. And again waits until further notice.

  He calms himself because he isn’t the only one. He’s met other, more experienced commandants at stations and they’ve spoken a little. Yes, they say, we’re also going along until further notice. Yes, people are dying in the railroad cars. Yes, a lot. There’s always this sort of natural attrition, and nobody will question that. The main thing is for you to guard them strictly, so there are no emergencies.

  And it would have all been all right if not for the daily rounds … He suddenly realized he was beginning to recognize faces. Each time he sat in his compartment, plunging his spoon into hot, fluffy porridge, he would remember someone, either the emaciated, white-headed adolescent albino with the trusting pink eyes from the third car, or the fat, freckled woman from the sixth with the large scarlet birthmark on her cheek (“Boss man, share at least something, I’m wasting away, I am …”), or the small woman with the pale face and the green eyes half the size of her face from the eighth.

  That same thought comes right now: all these people had hot water for lunch today. They’re not people, he corrects himself. Enemies. The enemies had hot water for lunch and this makes the porridge seem flavorless.

  He recalls being a three
-year-old lad, sitting on the windowsill of their basement window in the evenings, watching for his mother’s square shoes among the feet running along the street. His mother came home after dark. Averting her eyes, she would give him plain hot water to drink and put him to bed.

  Fool. Weakling. Crybaby. Bakiev would have ridiculed him, and rightfully so.

  He stands and carries his untouched dish off to the kitchen compartment, to Polipyev. Let him choke down his own barley.

  That same evening, faint with a disagreeable premonition, Polipyev gives all the lamb from the icebox in the commandant’s railroad car to the deputy chief of the local train station. Dark red with the finest white marbling, the meat disappears into a voluminous wicker basket and floats out of Polipyev’s life forever, just as five or more kilos of butter and a dozen cans of the nicest condensed milk departed the refrigerator earlier. The handover takes place late in the evening, in darkness, on the verbal instruction of the special train’s commandant but without delivery documents and receipts, throwing the cautious Polipyev into a state of vague alarm.

  A half-hour later, a vat of millet porridge is brought to the train for the deportees. This is completely unexpected and so serendipitous (people hadn’t been fed for two days now) that it couldn’t be a simple coincidence.

  “So that’s how it is,” Polipyev reflects spitefully, observing from his compartment window as large yellow pieces of clumped porridge are tossed into buckets (one bucket per car) with a measuring ladle. “Our menacing beast of a commandant’s turned out to be just another run-of-the-mill briber.”

  That thought fills the supply manager with a calm satisfaction that’s all the greater because he’s nevertheless managed to conceal a couple of pieces of wonderful lamb. Polipyev decides to add them to the monotonous barley the next day without the commandant’s knowledge. Ignatov has been eating poorly of late and is unlikely to identify the taste of meat in porridge that has already come to be hated.