The people in the hold come to life and pound their fists when they hear voices.
“Chief!” carries, muffled, from behind the doors or maybe from under the boards of the deck. “Chief, we’re roasting!”
“There’s nothing to breathe!”
“If you opened the doors, we could at least take a little breath!”
“We’re already baked!”
Ignatov pulls at the collar of his uniform tunic. It truly is hot; it makes you want to dive right into the Yenisei.
“Don’t open the doors,” he tells the watchmen. “But you can open the little windows.”
A small row of low, tightly closed ventilation hatches stretches the length of the deck. The watchman kicks the little doors with the toe of his boot and they open, one after another. Sighs, sobs, and curses carry from the hatches.
“Were they given water?”
“There was no order,” the watchman shrugs.
“Water every hour.”
The last thing he needs is for someone to die of thirst on the final day.
Ignatov can now be more attentive as he gets his bearings. He continues his rounds. Towering over the deck are two squat wooden crew quarters held down by a flat roof. There are guards inside the quarters; provisions are kept there. On the roof is equipment, a couple of upside-down boats, and coils of rope. A few watchmen are wandering on the roof – their deep-blue shadows sway on the waves along the side of the barge and the merciless creak of boards is audible overhead. Everything creaks here: the deck (the boards gape with crevices that move underfoot as if they’re alive), the walls of the crew quarters (which have been eaten away by beetles, to dust in some places, and blackened from rot in others), and dried-out gangways. A low hum comes from railings, red from thin, rusty scabs on paint that was once white. It’s scary to lean against those. They leave a thick, dark red mark on your hand if you touch them.
“My grandfather sailed on this one,” says a barefoot sailor as he runs ahead of Ignatov.
“Your grandfather, well, that makes sense,” says Ignatov, shaking his head.
The closer to the engine room, the stronger the vibration under their feet. The engine room’s crooked door is wide open and the machinery inside lets out a monotonous metallic clanging and a blaze of heat. Somewhere below, in darkness that breathes out jets of flame, two blackened stokers are singing, their white eyeballs and bared teeth flashing angrily. “The sea stretches so wide …”
The motor is loud but it’s also strained and uneven, as though short of breath.
“Do you have a mechanic here?” Ignatov calls to the barefoot sailor.
“No need.” The sailor smiles. “My grandfather told me the Clara has a mind of her own. No mechanic can convince her if she stops.”
Well, there you go. That’s that, then. Quite the tub.
When Ignatov hears that the pregnant peasant woman in the hold has taken a turn for the worse, he allows her to be brought up on deck. He comes over and has a look as one of the guards leads Zuleikha, yellowish and pale, into fresh air and sits her down in the shadow of the crew quarters. Her face has narrowed over the months. It seems as if her eyebrows and lashes have thickened and darkened, and her eyes are rimmed with thick blue paint. These eyes are all that’s left on her face.
But what do you know – she survived. The fat redheaded battleaxe from car number six with the big scarlet birthmark on her cheek died way back at Shchuchye Lake, unable to sustain life force even with her solid body. The mullah’s stout wife, the cat lover, didn’t withstand the journey, either, and departed near Vagai. But this one’s alive. Not only that, she’s carrying a child. What is her soul holding onto?
Why hadn’t he left her with the investigator back in Pyshma? Ignatov couldn’t answer that question for himself. Most likely for the same reason he’d scuttled down the back stairs to avoid the unfamiliar official left in charge at Bakiev’s office. His heart had faltered and raced ahead of his brain so he’d gone and done something stupid. If he’d cooled off and thought things through … well, it wouldn’t have resulted in him running or removing that woman from the investigation. What did she have to do with him, anyway? That’s right, nothing. Ignatov couldn’t even recall her husband’s face, no matter how he tried. He got angry at himself every time – why torment himself? Life isn’t long enough to recall all the peasant men who’ve come at him with axes and pitchforks. An entire division of them have already taken up residence in his head as it is. The folder is called “Case K-2437” and it contains several hundred souls. Damn, he’d like to toss all those faces out of his memory but it doesn’t happen. Fine, he’ll take them to the Angara, hand them over to Kuznets, and basta, the end. They’ll be forgotten; with time they’ll definitely be forgotten.
“Stand watch over her, comrade Ignatov?” The guard nods at Zuleikha. Her belly’s a mountain in front of her and she’s holding it with both hands, arranging herself more comfortably, breathing heavily.
Ignatov waves a hand, letting the guard go. Where’s someone like her going? He suddenly remembers carrying her in his arms, how light and slender she was, as if she weren’t a woman but a girl. Nastasya’s another matter, with a body that’s fleshy, supple, and rolls around in your hands, undulating, so you want to squeeze, knead, and smooth it. Ilona’s body is different, too; it’s soft, languid, and pliant, but a woman’s body all the same. This one’s just air, though. And why, he might ask, was he so scared he sent for a doctor during the night? It’s clear why: he was afraid she’d breathe her last, that’s why. He felt sorry for her.
All the same, she’ll die in the settlement. Taiga, midges, work … she won’t make it, no. Her strength is waning, you can see it in her eyes. Ignatov has recently realized that he can tell from their eyes who still has strength and whose strength is running out. Sometimes he guesses when doing his rounds: this one will be a stiff soon, the eyes are completely cold and dead; this man will still live a while, this woman, too. He guesses right, by the way. Basically, he’s turned into a fortune teller. An awful thought, ugh. That’s what a long trip does to a person …
Zuleikha turns around and raises her exhausted eyes to Ignatov. It’s as if she’s looked into his soul. And those green eyes have already made their mark on his heart.
“Don’t you dare give birth on my watch,” he says sternly and walks toward the bow of the barge.
He’ll hand her over to Kuznets; let her give birth then.
And so they leave Zuleikha on deck. She sits there all day, leaning her back against the wall of the crew quarters and gazing at ridges of green hills floating past in an uneven stubble of pines and spruces. The forests are dense here, dark. And they’re not just any forests but the urman. The watchman brings Zuleikha’s bundle of things up from the hold and she covers up for the night with her winter sheepskin coat. It’s August but the nights are cool and nippy.
Carrying the baby is difficult. Zuleikha’s belly has become large and cumbersome, and her legs are unwieldy, like iron. The baby is growing into someone restless, sometimes spinning like a spindle, sometimes kicking with all its might, sometimes leaning its little paws into her belly. The child apparently resembles its elder sister, Shamsia, who was also a naughty girl and a fidget. Or maybe the baby’s just hungry. Zuleikha herself has lost a lot of weight over these past months, like during the time of the Great Famine in 1921. Even her fingers are thinner, weakened, and stretched with translucent skin. And so it follows that the baby can’t be getting enough food, either.
She often looks at her belly with the fabric of her smock tightly stretched over it and imagines the tiny girl inside wrinkling a nose the size of the nail on a pinkie and opening her little mouth. Then her breasts fill with milk, growing heavy, like male flesh before a romantic meeting; two dark, round spots the size of a tenke coin show through on the fabric. The baby’s only seven months old but the milk has already come in. This happened once before, when she was expecting Sabida.
Zuleikha a
ttempts to forbid herself from thinking about her daughters but it doesn’t work. Shamsia-Firuza, Khalida-Sabida, the water splashes against the side. Shamsia! – a gull in the sky screeches heartrendingly. Firuza! – a second one answers. Khalida! Sabida! – the others join in.
She’s tired of fighting that. And tired of starving. And tired of always traveling somewhere. The imperious black-mustached Red Hordesman had kept Leibe, Izabella, Konstantin Arnoldovich, the hard-to-love yet familiar Ilya Petrovich Ikonnikov, and even the horrid Gorelov all back somewhere on the pier. It is doubtful Zuleikha will see them again. They have already been consigned to the past and turned into spectral recollections, like Murtaza or the Vampire Hag. She is so tired of losing people close to her. And living in fear of parting, in constant expectation of a quick death for the child, of her own death. She is tired of living in general.
Her only joy and comfort lies in her pocket. Zuleikha gratefully remembers the moment her death appeared to her in the railroad car, to the rhythmic clacking of wheels. It was lying on her palm, as a heavy lump of sugar with sharp edges, and it has been with her ever since, like a loyal friend or dedicated mother. In her roughest moments, Zuleikha would grope at the folds of her clothes for that cherished lump and feel relief. Apparently, this truly was her very own death, hers alone, sent from above through a supreme gesture. While all around her people were dying from illness or hunger, others losing their minds, their deaths didn’t touch her: they felt distant, passing her by. Those who had died on other trains and couldn’t be buried in time lay along the railroad and saw their fellow travelers off with frozen gazes. Others who’d heard about the daring escape carried out near Pyshma and wanted to repeat it had been caught and executed on the spot, by the train cars. But Zuleikha was still living. That meant this very death had been predestined for her; it’s small, sweet, and smells – subtly and appealingly – of something bitter. Maybe it’s too bad she didn’t eat the sugar back on the train; she could have brought her suffering to an end long ago. I’ll eat it as soon as things become completely unbearable, she’d decided. It would be better to do it, of course, before the child is born, so they can pass away together, never parting.
Zuleikha opens her eyes. All the objects around her seem to ripple and float in dawn’s light-pink mist. A sturdy, white-breasted gull is sitting on a railing, the glistening amber buttons of its unblinking eyes watching. Behind the gull, vague outlines of distant shores show through the cottony morning fog that’s formed. The motor is silent; the barge drifts noiselessly downstream with the current. Small waves splash tenderly against the side. And then there’s a familiar voice at the bow: “Go ahead!”
The gull spreads its wings, rustling almost soundlessly, and dissolves into the fog. Zuleikha looks out from behind the wall of the crew quarters. She sees Ignatov at the bow, bare to the waist. A sailor is splashing river water on him from a bucket. Ignatov laughs and shakes his wet head so spray flies everywhere. His hands rub his ears, his sharp ribs, and shoulders bulging with muscles. He has a nice smile after all. It’s white, like sugar. And there’s a deep scar on his back, under one shoulder blade.
They toil their way down the Yenisei for a day and don’t enter the Angara until the following morning. The day turns out hot and sweaty again as they chug upstream; they feel sleepy in the afternoon. Ignatov sits on a tightly coiled bundle of rope, leaning his back against the wooden covering of the crew quarters. Out from under the bill of the peaked cap that’s pulled down over his eyebrows, he can see the spines of hills tinged bluish-green and the stony cheeks of precipices. Thin ripples of sunlight burn hot on the water, like fiery fish scales.
Now, at last, there can’t be much longer. He’s already counting the minutes until he sees the distant red dot of a flag on a boat; until he hands people over to Kuznets, counting heads so they don’t torture themselves with lists (or have to look at their faces – why do that yet again?); until this is out of his hands so he can breathe freely and calmly for the first time in half a year. That’s it, Kuznets, you’re in charge now. May those bearded faces haunt your nights now. I’ve had enough. I’d like work that’s a little simpler and more understandable. If they’re enemies, then cut them right down, mercilessly; but look after them if they’re friends. For enemies to be looked after and fed and pitied and doctored … well, spare me. And then it will be home, home! Get enough sleep on the train and go straight to Bakiev from the train station to report, and then to Nastasya in the evening – to Nastasya, sweet, dear, and passionate. He wasn’t overly concerned that she might have found someone else during this half-year. That one would disappear, just like he’d shown up. Anyway, he, Ignatov, would figure things out quickly. He’d have to find time for Ilona, too, to stop by, since things hadn’t ended nicely.
The barefoot sailor is tinkering nearby, repairing a rotten gangway covered with black spots of mildew.
“You been on the Angara before?” he asks.
It’s so hot Ignatov feels too lazy to answer. Dozing to the monotonous plopping of waterwheels is sweet and languorous. You were right, Bakiev, my friend, Ignatov admits to himself.Oh, this business of nannying a train turned out to be far from simple …
“My grandfather told me there’s nothing on earth prettier than the Angara,” says the sailor, not giving up. “Or more treacherous, either.”
Ignatov barely raises an eyebrow in response … He’ll admit to witnessing the search in Bakiev’s office, too. He’ll tell Bakiev he didn’t doubt for a second that they’d release him soon, that’s why he left then. They’ll laugh about that together and slap each other on the shoulders.
Flattered by the merest attention given by a commander from another place, the sailor abandons what he’s doing and turns to Ignatov, continuing to drive his point home: “The Angara, she’s like … a mother for some, a sister or stepmother. And for others, she’s a downright grave.”
Ignatov rests his chin on his chest. He’ll need a gift for Nastasya, for the long wait. Some kind of headscarf, maybe – or what is it women like, anyway? His head falls to his shoulder; the light rocking lulls him, puts him to sleep.
“My grandfather, he drowned here himself,” says the sailor, winding up his story. “Uh-huh. Didn’t help that he could swim like a pike.”
Lightning cuts the sky open lengthwise, along the whole horizon. Violet clouds rub up against one another, breathing blackness. There’s a low, rumbling peal of thunder but no rain.
The storm seems to have sprung up spontaneously, in an instant. A gust of wind knocks the hat from Ignatov’s head. He wakes, darts after it, and lo and behold – sweet mother! – it’s already all around: the horizon’s rocking, waves are hurling foam, gulls are darting in the air like arrows, and the sailors are rushing around like cats with their tails on fire. You can’t hear the screams over the wind.
“Comrade commander!” A watchman has appeared next to him and is shouting into his ear. “Over there …”
He points a finger at the stern, the dolt, unsure what to say. Ignatov heads toward the stern. The metal door is shaking from being pounded.
“Open it!” they wail inside. “Open it!”
“A rebellion?” says Ignatov with a nervous start. “You want to organize a revolution for me, you bastards?”
He yanks his revolver from its holster. The watchmen are aiming their rifles at the doors.
“Sons of bitches!” carries from the hold. “We’ll drown, open up! You drowning us on purpose? Sons of bitches! Sons of bitches! There’s water in here! Water! Aaaah!”
“You’re playing tricks,” hisses Ignatov. “You won’t fool me. Go on, back, you lowlifes! I’ll shoot!”
The barge’s horn is low and booming, and reverberates across the water. What’s going on? Why are you honking, you devils? Ignatov races to the wheelhouse but it’s hard to run because the deck is jumping under his feet, the boards are cracking, and there’s spray in his face.
There’s nobody in the wheelhouse. The ship’s
wheel is spinning like crazy.
“What is this?” Ignatov shouts in the face of a sailor running past him.
“We’re going down!” the other yells back. “Can’t you see?”
Going down? How can that be? So the ones in the hold weren’t lying?
A crate of tools slides off the tilting roof with a loud crash – it cracks but doesn’t spill. Whistling and spinning, it sweeps along the deck past Ignatov and disappears into the water. And then suddenly, falling like rain, like hail, are handles, crowbars, and shovels … Axe blades gleam past (Ignatov just manages to press against the wall – they would have hacked him as they flew!), scythes screech, pitchforks scatter overboard with a thin groan, and nails jingle along the wood. Carts leap into the water, their wheels turning. An entire stockpile of goods is flying, flying, into the Angara, toward all the demons in hell.
The deck is keeling, keeling. The horizon suddenly tips, one end rearing into the sky. The barge’s stern settles, its blunt snout raised into the air.
“Jump!” carries from the bow. “Go! You’ll be dragged down!”
Over there, several sailors and stokers are springing into the Angara, as fast as frogs.
What’s that about? Jump? What about the people in the hold? Ignatov gropes in his pocket for the key and takes it out. He races toward the stern. The watchmen are thudding unsteadily toward him.
“Halt!” shouts Ignatov.
A wall of wind silences him and his shout can’t be heard.
The escort guards hurl their rifles in the water, jump after them, and disappear in the waves. They’ve abandoned their post, the dogs! The final watchman tears a red-and-white life ring from a nail, tosses it in the Angara, lets out a harrowing wail, crosses himself, and plops into the water below.
The deck jerks desperately and Ignatov falls and grabs at some kind of clamp. The key flies out of his hand, drumming along the boards. Ignatov throws his chest on it before it slides away. There it is, the dear thing! He puts it in his mouth: Now I won’t let it go. He continues crawling toward the stern, hanging on with his hands.
Zuleikha Page 20