Zuleikha

by Guzel Yakhina

  In July, the food situation will improve since not many trains come this far into Siberia, so it will be easier for Ignatov to scare up provisions. And bread will appear once again in the exiles’ rations.

  Chulym, Novosibirsk …

  But people will die even more frequently as malnutrition and sheer exhaustion from the long trip manifest themselves. Typhus will break out in half the cars, taking away around fifty lives.

  Yurga, Anzhero-Sudzhensk, Mariinsk …

  In total, during the six months of travel, attrition will amount to three hundred and ninety-eight heads. Not counting escapees, of course.

  Tisul, Kashtan, Bogotol, Achinsk …

  As they approach Krasnoyarsk, Ignatov will use a pencil stub to cross out yet more names in the gray “Case” folder. He will realize that he sees faces rather than lines and letters when he glances at the surnames typed closely together.

  Nobody knows it’s their last day riding on the train. The wheels thunder and a wicked August sun is heating up the car through the window. Ikonnikov is entertaining Izabella. This is one of those rare moments when something pierces his usual gloominess, something fresh, some sort of boyish mischief, and he becomes quick, lively, even playful. Zuleikha almost likes him in this mood. She doesn’t understand even a fraction of the jokes that make Izabella laugh so heartily and the reticent Konstantin Arnoldovich snort a little bit, but she tries not to miss those moments because it’s nice to be among cheerful, smiling people. She’s quiet and reserved, and the “formers” don’t avoid her.

  Lying on Ikonnikov’s open palm is a thin piece of bread he stashed away that morning.

  “More!” he says, impatiently wiggling his fingers.

  His eyes are tightly blindfolded with someone’s shirt; he’s like a child playing hide-and-seek. Izabella places another piece on the artist’s palm.

  “More!” he demands. “Come now, don’t stint on art!”

  Konstantin Arnoldovich gives up his piece. Ikonnikov mumbles with satisfaction and begins mashing the bread in his long fingers.

  Zuleikha watches with disapproval and sorrow. She wouldn’t give up her piece for anything. It would be different if there were a purpose, but this is just an indulgence. And the crumbs are scattering on the floor so they can’t be picked up.

  The bread is softening in Ikonnikov’s flexible fingers. He’s kneading it into a pliant gray mass, mashing, mashing, and – there you go – gradually turning it into … a toy? Someone’s head! Izabella and Konstantin Arnoldovich don’t look away, observing as bushy, arched eyebrows take shape under a mane of hair, an aquiline profile develops, a luxuriant mustache turns up, and a bulging chin swells …

  “Mon Dieu,” Izabella says solemnly.

  “Unbelievable,” whispers Konstantin Arnoldovich. “It’s simply unbelievable …”

  “Well?” Ikonnikov cries victoriously and tears the blindfold from his eyes.

  In his hand is a small, absolutely living head: its gaze is penetrating and intent, and there’s a wise half-smile on its lips.

  “I received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor not long ago,” sighs Ikonnikov. “Nineteen heads in bronze. Seven in marble. Two in malachite.”

  “And one in bread,” adds Konstantin Arnoldovich.

  Zuleikha stares at the bready bust and knows she’s seen this intelligent face before somewhere, with its stern yet kind, fatherly gaze. A good person, and the artist molded it skillfully. It’s a pity about the bread, though.

  Ikonnikov holds the bust out to her.

  “You’re always giving me all your bread,” she says, shaking her head.

  “Not you, dear,” says Izabella, her eyes indicating Zuleikha’s protruding belly. “Him.”

  “Her,” Zuleikha corrects her. “It’s a girl.”

  She takes the bready head and hungrily bites off half, right at the mustache. Konstantin Arnoldovich breaks into a sudden, shrill whistle and turns around. Behind him, Gorelov’s eyes are flashing with curiosity and his nostrils are anxiously twitching. He’s obviously desperate to listen in on the conversation – he’s been completely brutal since the memorable escape, sniffing out, unearthing, and searching everything, so he can report to Ignatov – but he’s missed this.

  “Gorelov, you ignorant soul!” Konstantin Arnoldovich’s sharp, narrow little shoulders screen Zuleikha, who’s still chewing. “Are you aware that our Ilya Petrovich created the scenery for the Mariinsky Theater’s ballet The Bolshevik?”

  “We don’t go wagging our tails around at the ballet. And you’re not very likely to now, either.”

  Gorelov’s hand angrily snatches at Konstantin Arnoldovich’s frail arm, pushing him aside: Here, let’s have a look. It turns out there’s nothing to see, though, just a pregnant peasant woman chewing with a stuffed mouth and picking crumbs out of her palm with her lips. But there was something here, there was, his gut feels it … Disappointed, Gorelov exhales through his nostrils and casts a glance out the window. Floating past are the tall, gray buildings of yet another station with large letters on their brick face.

  “Krasnoyarsk,” someone reads aloud.

  Apparently they’ll stand for another couple of weeks, no less. It really truly is as if they’re riding to the edge of the earth. The din of the wheels fades. Outside is the overwrought barking of dogs. What is this for? The railroad car door slides open with a drawn-out wail and a loud, sharp voice shouts a command over the barking: “Exit!”

  “What?”

  “How … ?”

  “Is that for us?”

  “We’re already there?”

  “It can’t be …”

  “It can, Bella, it can …”

  “Gather your things, your things! Faster, Ilya Petrovich – what are you doing, anyway?”

  “Professor, help Zuleikha …”

  “I’ve never been to Krasnoyarsk …”

  “What do you think, will they leave us here or take us further?”

  “Where did my book go?”

  “Maybe they’re just transferring us to another train?”

  The uneasy crowd pours out of the train car down a board that’s thrown from the car to the ground as a gangway. Zuleikha is last to go, grasping at her bundle of things with one hand and at her large belly, which faces sharply up, with the other. In the bustle of gathering their belongings, nobody notices that Izabella’s emerald-colored hat remains lying under the bunks: it’s fairly worn but still bright, its iridescent peacock feathers shining.

  They are met by a lot of soldiers and every other one has a large dog that’s quivering with tension and barking hoarsely. The barking is so loud it’s impossible to talk.

  Holding his ever-present “Case” folder under his arm, Ignatov observes from a distance as the exiles leave the train. The folder has faded during the long months of the trip, and its government-issued cover is now obscured by dark blue scars from stamps and seals, violet dates, signatures, penciled additions, and squiggles. A distinguished folder, decorated with honors. He will now hand it over – along with the deportees – to some local official. No doubt he’ll still dream of the folder at night and it will throw its maw open, hurling its rudimentary insides in his face: a couple of thin, worn little sheets with dense columns of surnames, four hundred of which have been boldly crossed out with uneven pencil lines. That’s fine; he’ll dream of it for a couple of nights and then stop. Out of sight, out of mind.

  How loudly they bark, those dogs …

  “You’re greeting them as if they’re criminals being transferred,” Ignatov says to the soldier who’s come running over.

  “We greet everybody that way,” he responds with pride. “With music. Welcome to Siberia, as they say!”

  He smiles cordially. And the teeth in his mouth are metal, each and every one of them.

  THE BARGE

  Zinovy Kuznets, senior employee for special assignments at the Krasnoyarsk office of the State Political Administration, outright refuses to accept Ignatov’s
charges.

  “Here’s a barge for you,” he says. “And there’s the Yenisei River. Take them.”

  “It’s in my orders, in black and white – ‘hand over to the authority of the local office of the State Political Administration.’” Ignatov is seething.

  “Wake up! Read one line higher: ‘deliver to point of destination.’ First ‘deliver’ and then later ‘hand over.’ Well then, deliver, don’t shirk. Take command of the barge and sail up to the Angara. We’ll meet there in two days and I’ll accept your sorry lot.”

  “So where is it, your point of destination? In the taiga? In some godforsaken place? I was only assigned to look after them on the railroad! I brought them halfway across the country. Six months squandered on the rails! And you don’t want to accept them in your own city. That’s not our way, not the Soviet way.”

  “Want to, don’t want to … The only thing I’ve wanted since winter is a good night’s sleep!” Kuznets spits thickly and loudly by his feet, and looks off somewhere to the side, but his eyes truly are dazed and red. “You think because you’re sensitive and pretty you’re the only one in Siberia who should get a break? I receive a dozen barge loads every week, sometimes two. Where should I find escorts for all of them? So look here, Ignatov, as your superior officer, I order you to go aboard and deliver the entrusted cargo in the quantity of – you yourself know how many heads – to the place where the future labor settlement will be founded.”

  “I’m not yet under your direction!”

  “Well, consider yourself under it as of now. Or do you need a little piece of stamped paper? I’ll obtain it quickly, don’t think I won’t. Just don’t hold it against me later, my dear man …” Kuznets raises his reddish eyes, the black pupils like little needles, at Ignatov.

  Ignatov slaps his hands on his knees: I’m done for! He takes off his peaked cap and wipes his sweat-soaked forehead. This might be Siberia but the heat is hellish.

  They’re standing on a steep, high riverbank and can see everything from here. The dark blue cupola of the sky is reflected in the river’s broad mirror, which breathes with a slight ripple. The Yenisei’s water is dark, heavy, and lazy. The green left bank rears up in the distance. Bony berths stick out of a lopsided pier like fingers. There’s a stir by the pier as people swarm, dogs bark fervently, escort guards shout, and bayonets gleam in the sun. Exiles are being loaded onto a low, wide barge.

  Kuznets takes an ivory cigarette case out of his jacket.

  “Here, this one’s better.”

  Ignatov initially refuses, then grudgingly accepts one. Kuznets’s cigarettes are good, expensive.

  “You lost a lot along the way – four hundred heads. Did you starve them or –”

  “If they’d been fed better, I’d have brought more!”

  It’s too bad he’s lit the cigarette. The aromatic smoke is stuck in his throat; it’s not pleasing.

  “And wasn’t there an escape on your train?” Kuznets winks unexpectedly, hiding a smirk in the flourishes of his rounded black mustache. “And he wants to teach me what’s the Soviet way and what’s not …”

  Ignatov flings his unfinished cigarette into the river.

  “Well, now you understand,” Kuznets concludes in a superior tone. “Fine, don’t get steamed up. There’re lots of kulaks here, no harm done. They’ll dig the land there, plant wheat.” He nods at a long chain of soldiers carrying armloads of shovels, saws, and axes wrapped in old rags, plus crates bristling with other tools. “There’s a large, natural stock of them, you can see it yourself. You won’t even be able to blink before they multiply.”

  Lots of tools are being loaded on the barge, and there’s even a couple of sturdy utility carts with wooden wheels. (In the taiga? Are they going to harness elk to it? Ignatov wonders cheerlessly.) Equipment, sacks with provisions, bunches of kettles – everything’s being piled on the flat roof, wrapped in tarpaulins, and tied with ropes. They’re working in unison, the way they always do. The escort guards up on the roof hold their rifles horizontally. You can’t miss from there if anything happens. One waves his arms, commanding. The others walk around, occasionally glancing down from on high at the deportees swarming beneath them. They’re driving people somewhere below. They crawl along the gangway like ants and disappear, disappear into the bowels of the hold. The dogs’ agitated barking carries after them from the shore. They’re raging, the bastards. Are they fed human flesh or something?

  “What, you can’t wait to go back?” Kuznets notices Ignatov’s gloomy gaze. “Yes, our life’s harsh here. But don’t you worry – you’ll deliver your people and I’ll let you go home to your wife’s warm side.”

  “I’m not married,” Ignatov tells him coldly.

  *

  During loading, it turns out that the exiles won’t all fit on the barge. They’ve packed more than three hundred into the hold – so tightly they can scarcely breathe – and this violates all the guidance and regulations by greatly exceeding the allowable limit (the barge has settled low and heavy in the water), though several dozen are left outside even so.

  Kuznets has suggested they transport the oldest and frailest on deck – the old ones, he says, won’t jump overboard – but Ignatov won’t budge on this, not for anything. One escape is enough for him. That Kuznets is a son of a bitch after all. Of course he knew one barge wouldn’t be enough. Did he hope they’d all fit? Or that Ignatov, from inexperience or pity, would agree to take people in the open air?

  A second barge has already arrived at the pier and attached its blunt snout of a bow to a berth; it will take the second batch. Criminals, explains Kuznets. Judging from all the dogs barking, the convicts are already close by – they’ve been somewhere on the high shore waiting for Ignatov’s barge to cast off.

  “You fall asleep or what!” the official on the pier rasps at Ignatov. “Go on, out! You’ve created a line here, you Trotskyite …”

  “Up yours,” Ignatov snarls at him. “And yours, too.” (That’s for Kuznets.) “Do what you want but I’m not taking people in the open air. I’m the one responsible for them after all.”

  “Screw it,” says Kuznets, waving him away. “Give me the excess, for the launch. And take the barge away right now – get it out of my sight.”

  For the excess, they select the weakest, most tired, and unlikeliest to escape. Kuznets himself points a finger, taking many of the Leningrad remainders and several gray-haired peasants. They’re rounded up into Kuznets’s roomy launch, into a hold for storing fish. Kuznets is supposed to leave the next night, follow Ignatov’s barge, and catch up to it somewhere around the mouth of the Angara. In addition, he’s demanding Ignatov assign someone very reliable to watch over the group and report any trouble. They have three days’ journey ahead and who knows what might happen. Ignatov smirks and gives him Gorelov.

  “I’ll take people, yes, I will,” Kuznets declares, “but I’m not shouldering your responsibility, Ignatov. You’ll be accountable for them during the trip, remember that.”

  Coward.

  Kuznets takes the “Case” folder anyway, just for now, “to have a read.” Ignatov feels relieved when he passes it into Kuznets’s sun-browned hands. It takes a load off his mind.

  They finally head out. The motorized barge moves off along the channel like a large black cucumber, cutting the Yenisei in two. It creeps heavily and slowly under its excessive weight. The motor wheezes and sputters, belching thick smoke from its large-striped stack again and again. High waves extend in both directions like straight white mustaches.

  The barge’s name is Clara. The long, neat letters were painstakingly traced out on its rounded bow at one time, but the paint flaked off and was eaten away by rust long ago, so now it’s barely visible on Clara’s dark brown side. More recently, someone decided to give her a surname and painted an unprepossessing, slightly leaning “Zetkin” below. But those letters have peeled off, too, almost erased by the waves.

  First of all, Ignatov checks the doors of the
huge hold in which his batch of people has been housed; the hold extends the entire length of the barge, and there are doors at the bow and stern. The doors in the bow are useless so were boarded up long ago, meaning that passengers – exiles and political prisoners shipped on the barge before 1917 and then exiles and criminals who are transported now – are loaded in and out only through the stern. Which is proper because fewer doors mean fewer anxieties. Ignatov feels the fat boards, digs his fingernail at the half-rusted clamps fastening them, and tugs at the metal girders that crisscross them. Sealed off well, solidly. You couldn’t knock it out from inside, no matter how you tried. He puts a watchman there, just in case.

  The sharp, strong smell of male urine assaults his nose when he comes to the doors at the stern. That smell hovers everywhere on the barge, surrounding it like a cloud, but is especially acrid and cutting here, by the doors: it comes from the hold. It blends many generations of political and criminal prisoners. It’s a sort of final memory of them, a monument not made by human hands. Many of these people no longer exist: they’ve perished, but their smell remains.

  There are two watchmen, not just one, by the doors at the stern. The opening of the square doorway is covered from the inside by a strong wrought-iron grate: the fat rods are sunk into the walls and hold the grate right up against them – it can’t be loosened or knocked out. On the outside are metal doors closed with a wide bolt the thickness of a hand. Thought out practically. You could keep bears here, to say nothing of people weakened from long months of travel.

  “And this, why isn’t it locked?” Ignatov notices a half-open padlock in the bolt of one door.

  “There was no order,” a watchmen exhausted from the heat lazily answers. “They say it doesn’t open well, needs to be repaired.”

  Utter sloppiness. Ignatov takes the lock in his hands. The key’s sticking out of the keyhole and he turns it in one direction, then the other; the key clicks obediently when it turns. He hangs the lock on the door and closes it. Now everything’s in good order and a mouse couldn’t slip through. He pockets the key.