Zuleikha

by Guzel Yakhina

  On their last day standing near Sverdlovsk, there’s a small incident in the eighth carriage. The special train has been kept there for nearly a week. There’s a dark valley, marked in places by remnants of slushy snow but already touched with fresh green shoots, that’s visible through an opening in the door about the width of the palm of a hand. (On the move and during stops, the door is permitted to be opened a little, but when entering populated areas it is supposed to be locked with two bolts.) The green is intensifying with each passing day, growing brighter, and filling the horizon.

  Fooled by the train’s prolonged standstill, a small red-breasted bird has decided to build its nest under the railroad car’s roof, not far from Zuleikha’s little window. Businesslike, it has fetched twigs and fluff, tirelessly stuffing them under the roof and chirping with excitement.

  “If we stand here this long again, she’ll have a chance to lay her eggs,” Konstantin Arnoldovich says, without tearing himself away from his book.

  “What eggs? We’ll scoff it down right now!” Gorelov swallows and makes his way closer to the window, wiggling his fingers in a predatory manner and mulling over how best to bag his prey.

  “Let’s admire it a little longer,” says Ikonnikov, drawing his squinting eyes closer to the window.

  A sudden crashing blow, and dust, sand, and sawdust shower down. The little bird cheeps with fright and darts into the sky. It’s Zuleikha who struck the railroad car’s ceiling with a long, sturdy board she pulled out of the iron clamps on the door. She gazes after the little bird, returns the board to its place, and brushes off her hands.

  Gorelov falls on the bunks with a disappointed wail – “What the hell are you doing, you fool Tatar woman!” That’s it, lunch is gone. It flew away. Ikonnikov looks at Zuleikha with interest for what seems to be the first time during the journey.

  “If she loses her nest, she won’t lay eggs,” she says curtly. “She’ll be looking for her lost nest all summer.”

  She climbs back up on the bunk. She notices that a board on the ceiling has come detached from the blow and a narrow crevice has formed, revealing a streak of sky. And that’s very nice because she can’t look out the window all the time.

  The train will begin moving in the evening. It will cross the Ural mountain range that night. Zuleikha will watch the stars twinkling through the crevice in the ceiling and think, So, Allah, is there still long to ride?

  Where-where? the wheels will clatter. Where-where? Where-where? And they’ll answer themselves: There-there. There-there. There-there.

  ESCAPE

  “Sons of bitches! Everybody –” says a crazed, half-strangled voice from somewhere below.

  Zuleikha is hanging out of the bunk, peering into the darkness. What’s down there? Through the loud, rhythmical noise of the wheels come sounds of struggle, stifled grunting, and fisticuffs, which are alternately muffled, as if striking something soft, and resonant, as if striking something hard. In a narrow, slanting slice of moonlight shining through the window there are several bodies swarming by the cast-iron stove.

  “I’ll let you stinking bitches have it!” another stifled shout changes to grunting.

  It sounds like their minder’s voice. And yes, there he is, Gorelov, lying on the floor, hands tied behind his back, mouth bound by a rag, and wriggling like a little worm. Above him a couple of strapping peasants are pummeling him ferociously and enjoying it. He jerks violently, bending like a yoke, and throws them both off, but then he hits his head on a corner of the stove and goes quiet.

  The railroad car isn’t sleeping. The peasant men and women are matter-of-factly exchanging remarks and meaningful glances on the bunks, nodding that he had it coming. Some help tie the motionless minder more firmly, others bustle around, gathering their things.

  The man who once had many children but is now a solitary peasant pulls the fat heavy board out of the iron clamps on the door. He approaches Zuleikha’s bunk, gets into position, and strikes the end of the board on the same spot she hit that morning, scaring away the red-breasted bird.

  “What are you doing, brother?” says Zuleikha, scared.

  Not responding, he hits the ceiling again and again. He strikes in time with the clacking of the wheels so it can’t be heard. The crevice widens overhead, gaping, and now there’s a broad starry tongue of sky visible through the hole, rather than a narrow strip. The peasant extends the board to Zuleikha – here, hold this! – and leaps up on the bunk. He kneels and thrusts his wiry shoulders into the ceiling, which is already yielding. Something cracks and creaks, and a fresh breeze bursts through the gap, hitting Zuleikha in the face. The peasant pulls himself up with his arms and disappears above.

  “Garrrmmmph!” Gorelov has come to and writhes on the floor, his eyes boring into Zuleikha.

  The peasant man’s face hangs over the star-strewn hole in the ceiling. He’s smiling for the first time in several months.

  “Well?” he says to those crowded below. And he extends a long, bony arm.

  One after the other, the exiles grasp that hand, leap on Zuleikha’s bunk, and push their way through the hole in the ceiling. Peasant men, women, and adolescents disappear above, quickly and nimbly. One fat woman gets stuck in the narrow opening, but the people below are in a hurry and those awaiting their turn press and push, and she somehow climbs through, tearing her dress and body, leaving threads and pieces of fabric on the sharp, rough wood.

  Gorelov grunts and growls frightfully, his body beating against the iron stove.

  “And you, sister?” The voice is just above her ear. The peasant is looking through the hole at Zuleikha, raising his brow in encouragement.

  Escape? Leave the carriage where she’s already spent so many long weeks? And a bunk that’s heated from her warmth and smells of her body? Leave the sweet, good-natured professor and the kind Izabella? Disobey the strict Ignatov, the stern soldiers with rifles, and the angry station bosses? Disobey her own fate?

  She shakes her head. No, I won’t go, may Allah protect me.

  “But you’re strong, you can do it!” The peasant man extends an insistent hand.

  Doubtful, she looks for a long time at the broad hand with dark, bumpy calluses. She finally lowers her head for no.

  “Well, suit yourself.”

  Muffled footsteps knock on the ceiling. Outside the little window they can see long shadows quickly falling from the roof, flying down below the railroad embankment, and floating into the forest in a black flock. And that’s that.

  Zuleikha looks around and sees the railroad car has emptied out. Nearly all the peasants left, other than a few lone women and a couple of feeble old people, who having given their parting son or grandson a long and tight embrace, now sit on the bunk, their unmoving, sunken eyes looking at the hole in the ceiling where they recently disappeared.

  The majority of the Leningrad “formers” have stayed; only a couple of young female students flitted off. Izabella is sitting on the bunk, firmly squeezing her husband’s hand. A smiling Ikonnikov is dreamily looking at the sparkling stars in the ceiling’s torn opening, for some reason whispering, “Thank you, thank you.” Professor Leibe, who’s been sitting alongside Zuleikha the whole time, leans back, sighing with relief.

  “Freedom is similar to happiness,” he purrs under his breath, “harmful for some, useful for others.”

  “Goethe?” Konstantin Arnoldovich comes to life on the neighboring bunk.

  “Novalis,” says Ikonnikov, joining in.

  “No, forgive me, but I’m certain it’s Goethe!”

  “I won’t forgive you. It’s definitely Novalis.”

  Gorelov wriggles on the floor, groaning. Nobody has thought to untie him yet.

  Zuleikha suddenly realizes she’s still holding the board in her hands; she tosses it to the floor. A golden scattering of stars quivers in the splintered gap in the ceiling.

  The country where Zuleikha lives is very large. Very large and red, like bull’s blood. Zuleikha is standi
ng in front of a huge map that covers an entire wall, where a giant scarlet blot resembling a pregnant slug has sprawled – it’s the Soviet Union. She has already seen this slug once before, on an agitational propaganda poster in Yulbash. Mansurka-Burdock had also explained: “Here it is,” he’d said. “Our motherland is immense. It stretches from ocean to ocean.” Zuleikha hadn’t understood then where those “oceans” were, but she remembered the slug, which was awfully funny, with a beard and a hilarious hook-like paw out front. And now, on this high wall, it truly seems immense because even two people, let alone one Zuleikha, couldn’t stretch their arms across it. Along its bilberry-red body there wriggle dark blue veins of rivers (is her dear Chishme among them?), and cities and villages are black dots, like beauty marks (who could show her where Yulbash is?). Zuleikha reaches her fingers toward the shiny surface of the map but doesn’t have time to touch. Ignatov’s stern voice lashes like a whip:

  “Is it true you helped them escape?”

  Zuleikha jerks her finger away from the map. Ignatov is standing by a window wide open to the night, looking out, and smoking. Yellow light from a kerosene lamp on the table illuminates the fabric of his uniform tunic, which is stretched taut between his shoulders under the cross of his tight belts.

  “Don’t deny it,” he goes on. “People saw.”

  The night is warm and velvety outside the window. She keeps silent.

  “Why did you stay?”

  It would seem that Gorelov, that malicious soul, had gone out of his way to report the matter, venting his fury. Nobody had untied him, after all, and he’d lain about, wrapped up like a sacrificial lamb all night, until they reached Pyshma. Everything was discovered in the afternoon, during the stop in Pyshma. Ignatov came into their car for inspection and his face twitched and blanched when he saw the hole in the ceiling, then everyone started running in and shouting, their feet stamping. Gorelov was taken – under guard! – in one direction and the others were taken – under guard! – in the other. The hole in the ceiling was quickly boarded up but the escapees … well, just go and find them. And of course they weren’t fed today because there was too much going on. In the evening they took Leibe from the railroad car first, then Izabella, Konstantin Arnoldovich, and somebody else. They were taken away and then brought back. Interrogation, said Ikonnikov. And Izabella asked him: “My dear Ilya Petrovich, is that really called interrogation?” And she was laughing very cheerfully.

  It was during the night that they shook Zuleikha awake and brought her here. It’s a large room where the skeleton of a once-beautiful chandelier is suspended like a huge bronze spider from a ceiling that rises into dark heights; where walls that were once covered with tinted whitewash have now been reduced to dark-brownish bricks; where a couple of mismatched black chairs have cracked varnish on their sharply bent backs; where a large, carved table in the center is burned on one side and has a stack of books in place of one leg; and where, over an austere cube of a safe in the corner, there hangs a portrait of the same wise, mustached man Zuleikha saw on the clock tower of the Kazan kremlin. Zuleikha is glad to see him – his squinting eyes look at her in a warm, fatherly way, as though they’re calming and protecting her from Ignatov, who’s angry in the extreme.

  Ignatov turns to Zuleikha. His eyes are blacker than black, and it’s as if the skin is pulled tightly over each bone of his face.

  “So what’s the meaning of this silence? We have an escape, about four dozen souls bolted from the train, and you’re playing dumb?”

  A tiny reddish flame – a hand-rolled cigarette – breathes in his fingers. He approaches the table and forcefully stubs it out in a small wooden dish filled with cigarette butts. The bowl clunks, tumbles, and falls to the floor; cigarette butts fly everywhere. “Damn it,” Ignatov grumbles and starts gathering them up. Zuleikha hurries and crouches beside him. It’s unheard of that a man would pick trash off the floor in a woman’s presence while she watches!

  The cigarette butts are cold and small, like worms. They’re crumbling with ash and there’s a smell of stale smoke. And Ignatov smells of warmth.

  “You could be facing the camps, you fool,” he says, his voice right beside her. “Or the ultimate punishment. Do you know what the ultimate punishment is?”

  Zuleikha looks up. It’s completely dark here under the table and Ignatov’s pupils are as black as coal in the whites of his eyes.

  “I don’t understand Russian well,” she finally says.

  Harsh, hot fingers clench her chin.

  “You’re lying!” hisses Ignatov. “You understand everything, you just don’t want to say anything. Well, talk! Did they make an arrangement to run away together? Where did they want to go? Talk!”

  Her chin hurts.

  “I don’t know anything. I saw the same as the others saw. I heard the same as the others heard.”

  Ignatov’s face, with its black holes for eyes, comes right up to her ear and his breath is on her cheek.

  “Oh, what a stubborn Tatar woman. Zuleikha, that’s your name, isn’t it?”

  She turns her face toward him.

  “It’s too bad I didn’t go with them. Now I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  The door creaks open.

  “Guard!” calls out the rattled voice of the chief of security operations at Pyshma. “Where did they get to?”

  The thudding of the guard’s feet is hurried and frightened, like the sound of potatoes scattering from a pail. Ignatov’s fingers release her chin and her skin burns as if it’s been scorched. He rises from under the table and straightens his uniform:

  “Yes, we’re here, don’t fret.”

  Zuleikha rises after him, placing the dish with the cigarette butts on the table. Her hands are as black as if she’s been rubbing coal.

  A young, pimply escort guard holding his rifle horizontally sighs with relief. He looks at Zuleikha and bursts out laughing: there are long dark streaks extending along her cheeks and chin. Ash. He wipes the grin off his face when he meets the Pyshma chief’s stern gaze, then he backs toward the exit and closes the door behind him. Ignatov turns to Zuleikha and starts cackling, too, flustered.

  “So, did you interrogate her?” asks the chief.

  He’s short and sturdy. His hands are as big as shovels, though, as if he’d stolen them from someone else. Ignatov is silent; he wipes the ash from his hands.

  “I see you interrogated her,” smiles the chief, glancing mockingly at Zuleikha’s streaked face.

  He takes a white sheet of paper from the table and scrutinizes both blank sides.

  “And wrote up a report,” he continues good-naturedly, crumpling the paper in his hands. “I told you, Ignatov, that interrogation is not a simple thing. An art, one might say. Experience is needed here. Mastery! Sure, he says, I know a thing or two about this!”

  Either the paper happens to be very crisp or the chief’s hands are firm because the sheet crunches loudly and lushly in his hands, like fresh snow.

  “How about this.” He rolls the paper into a firm little ball. “Leave her with me and I’ll have a talk with her. You do the paperwork transferring her over to us for investigation.”

  Ignatov takes his officer’s cap from the edge of the table, puts it on, and slowly walks toward the door. Zuleikha’s gaze follows him, puzzled: What is this? Why?

  The chief swings wide and hurls the paper pellet into a wire wastebasket by the door. He sits down at the desk and opens the top drawer. Without looking, he goes through the familiar motion of taking out a stack of paper, pens, and an ink well. Whistling something cheery, he clasps his hands together and stretches his long, strong fingers with a crack.

  Ignatov stops at the door and looks at the ball of paper bouncing at the bottom of the wastebasket. He turns.

  “She doesn’t know where they went,” he says.

  “Is that what she whispered to you here under the table?” The chief shoots a glance at Ignatov across the room.

  “She won’t help you, comrade
. She has nothing to say.” Ignatov comes back into the room.

  The chief leans back and the chair creaks long and strained, as if it’s about to collapse, and he scrutinizes Zuleikha and Ignatov closely, as if he’s seeing them for the first time. He continues stretching his fingers.

  “Well, I never! You think that’s very clever! You’re offending me, Ignatov. Everybody talks to me. Even the mute.”

  “I’m taking her back.”

  “How about that!” The chief finally unclasps his hands and slaps them loudly on the table. “He lets an entire train car slip, comes to his senses half a day later, and I’m supposed to look into it? Find them in the taiga, catch them? They went in all directions long ago, to villages and small stations. And I’m supposed to run like hell, panting and sweating, and then file a report about why I didn’t catch them! Then he even takes away my first witness, too. That’s how it is, is it?”

  “My job is to transport people. Yours is to catch them.”

  “So why are you transporting them so badly, Ignatov? You killed half of them along the way. You closed your eyes to an organized escape. And now you don’t want to help the investigation and are taking away an abettor. You think you’ll come out of this with clean hands?”

  “I’ll answer for my mistakes myself if they ask. Just not to you.”

  Ignatov nods to Zuleikha: Let’s go! She shifts her gaze to the reddened chief.

  “They’ll ask, Ignatov, they’ll ask!” he’s already shouting. “And very soon! I won’t even begin to cover for you. I’ll tell them how you were protecting a kulak broad!”

  Ignatov adjusts his peaked cap, turns on his heels, and goes out of the room. Zuleikha takes frightened little steps behind him. She casts a final glance into the room as she’s leaving. The huge red slug is crawling imperturbably along the wall and the wise, mustached man is smiling tenderly after them.