Something above him sighs loudly, then slaps violently, booming. Ignatov looks up and sees the tarpaulin is beating at the roof like a giant sail and the ropes are flung up toward the sky, like hands in prayer.
To the hold, to the hold, Ignatov! Let those kulaks out. Let everybody out, and the hell with it! What, did you bring them all this way for nothing?
Through the space between the crew quarters, he notices the pregnant woman on the other side of the deck. She’s gripping a railing with her hands and gawking at Ignatov. She’s too far away; he can’t reach.
“Jump,” he cries at her, pulling the key from his mouth and attempting to yell over the wind. “Jump into the water, you fool! You’ll be dragged under!”
A large wave hangs over the side of the barge and crashes flat on the deck. After flowing back, there’s neither woman, nor railing. Only broken, rusted stubs sticking out.
Crawl further, Ignatov, further! That was one woman. You need to let many go.
As he crawls up to the door of the hold, he notices water gushing into the open ventilation hatches. Someone’s fingers are stretching into the gaps, attempting to catch hold but a wave washes them back inside.
The deck under Ignatov wails with hundreds of voices.
His chest shudders from blows to the boards – someone’s attempting to knock them out.
Groans drift up from below.
Thunder claps. Rain falls in thick sheets and sloshes on the deck. Ignatov crawls toward the door but everything around him is suddenly becoming loose and slippery from the rain. Now, now, you sons of bitches, I’ll let you out, don’t wail.
The moment he seizes one of the door handles, something cracks loudly and ominously, and the barge begins submerging into the water.
Ignatov manages to keep his fingers clenched, holding onto the handle and not dropping the key. The only thing he can’t manage is to take a deeper breath. Water is pouring into his ears, nose, and eyes. Ignatov is descending into the Angara – Clara is dragging him down with her.
Where are you, you damned keyhole? He pokes with the key, looking for the hole in the lock. Chk-chk! He found it, put the key in! But it won’t turn. It’s jammed. He’s desperately turning the key in the lock but the Clara is revolving slowly, plunging deeper.
Come on, Ignatov, come on! Water makes his hair billow, stings his eyes, and gets in his mouth.
There! It turned! He pulls the door. It opens slowly, as if in a dream.
There’s the grate behind it. Damn! Dozens of hands stretch through it, reaching toward Ignatov, seizing at the bars, and shaking them. Water is pouring into the hold through the grate, swiftly, relentlessly.
The door handle slips out of his fingers. Ignatov wants to catch it and reaches out, his muscles straining, but the force of the water hurls him aside. He sees wide-open eyes and wide-open mouths through a green layer of water behind the grate.
“A-a-a-a-a-h!” are their low, scared cries, and thousands of large bubbles surround Ignatov, sliding along his body, licking his chest, neck, and face.
In each bubble, an “A-a-a-a-a-h.”
Dozens of hands reach, reach toward him through the grate, wiggling their fingers. They sway like a huge sheaf of grain. They’re going deeper, deeper. Vanishing into the dark.
The water twists and tosses Ignatov in various directions, finally hurling him out, up to the surface.
“Aaaah!” he howls at the low sky, where shaggy clouds are billowing. “Aaaaaaah!”
Rain lashes at his open mouth.
“Ee! Ee!” answer the gulls.
Zuleikha is carried off somewhere below, through layers of water. Her eyes grow heavy as its thick greenness dissolves into them, darkening her view. A blizzard of bubbles spirals around her, beating at her face.
She’s clenching her teeth: Stay still, don’t breathe.
A faint light dances, flashing, sometimes below, sometimes to her side. It dwindles. Large, dark silhouettes are swimming in the distance – maybe they’re above, maybe below. Wreckage? People? Fish?
She presses her arms to her chest and pulls up her legs. Her braids are knotted around her neck.
All-powerful Allah, all is at Your will.
She is spun, somersaulted, and hurled side-first into something hard.
Allah heard your prayers and decided to cut short your life’s journey, so that you vanish without a trace in the waters of the Angara.
In the name of God, the Lord of mercy …
Water begins flooding her mouth. It’s a little bitter and her teeth crunch on sand.
Thanks be to God, Lord of heaven and earth …
Maybe she swallowed that water or maybe she breathed it. Her body has begun twitching, dancing.
Amen … Amen …
Her body jerks once more and goes still. Her arms hang like whips and her legs slacken. Her braids stretch upward, swaying slowly, like water plants. Zuleikha is sinking, her face down, her braids up. Lower, even lower, to the very bottom. The soles of her feet drop into soft silt, raising a lazy, murky black cloud around her. Ankles. Knees. Belly.
The child wakes up sharply, abruptly. Beating with its little feet, a second time, a third. Squirming with its little hands, turning its head and fidgeting. Zuleikha’s belly quivers from the small heels pounding inside.
Zuleikha’s legs shudder in response. Again. And again. They push off from the bottom. Tighten and slacken. Her arms tighten and slacken, too.
She kicks toward the surface. From an agitated and swaying silty cloud toward a distant light ripple. Up, higher and higher, through the malachite layers.
She thrashes harder with her arms and legs, and rises faster. Some sort of cool, buoyant current catches and carries her up.
A blinding wall of white light hits her eyes. Zuleikha batters the water with her arms, shouts, and coughs. There’s a sharp pain in her throat, from her nose to her very innards. Wind bites at her face and she hears gulls shrieking and waves pounding her ears. She catches sight of a shred of vivid blue sky. Could she really have swum up?
Water roils around her, buffeting, slipping through her fingers. There’s nothing to grasp. Zuleikha doesn’t know how to swim. Her feet are pulling her downward again. Is she really going back to the bottom? The horizon keels and ducks as her head goes under. Allah –
Hands pull her up by the braids.
“Lie on the water!” says a familiar voice next to her. “Belly on top!”
Ignatov!
Zuleikha attempts to wriggle free, to catch onto him with her hands, and at least grasp hold of something.
“You’ll drown us both!” Ignatov pushes away but doesn’t let go of her braids. “Lie back, you fool!”
She coughs and wails; she can barely hear. But she’s trying and she turns over so her belly’s on top and she’s lying on the water. Her belly rises above the surface like an island. Waves whip her face, as does rain falling from above.
“Legs and arms extended, make a star with them! A star! Do what I tell you!” Ignatov’s face is right next to her but she can’t figure out where. “There you go! Good job, you fool.”
Zuleikha extends her arms and legs and rocks like a jellyfish. She has an unbearable urge to cough but holds back. She’s breathing loudly, convulsively. If only she could get enough air to breathe, if only there were enough.
“I’m holding you,” says the voice next to her. “I’m holding your braids.”
The baby has calmed in her belly and isn’t bothering her. The waves are subsiding little by little, too, diminishing. The lightning is creeping away beyond the horizon, and a small wedge of blue sky is widening and growing. The clouds are dispersing in various directions.
“Are you here?” Zuleikha is afraid to turn her head; she doesn’t want to gulp down water.
“I’m here,” says the voice next to her. “How could I get away from you now?”
At first Ignatov wants to swim to shore but Zuleikha can’t. And so they toss around in the channel, drif
ting with the current. They’re fished out a couple of hours later, chilled through, their lips inky-blue. Kuznets’s nimble launch had come tearing along to meet the Clara but had found only her survivors. Other than Zuleikha and Ignatov, just a handful of sailors have been saved. Including the barefoot one – the one who kept talking about his grandfather. Apparently his time had not yet come.
When all of them – weakened and shaking from the cold – have been safely settled on the deck of the launch and ordered to remove and hand over their wet clothes for drying, Zuleikha shoves her hand in her pocket for the sugar. She pulls out only a handful of white sludge. She straightens her fingers and the goop immediately drains through them. She puts her hand over the side and the milky white drops flow off into the Angara.
The home brew glugs cheerfully as it’s poured from a tall, round green bottle into a crooked tin mug. Ignatov’s standing in the middle of the crew quarters, naked but for the burlap sacking he’s holding to his chest with his hand; there are still bits of river plants in his wet hair. He’s gazing evenly, unblinking, at that steady, cloudy stream. He grabs the mug without waiting for the last drops to fall from the bottle’s mouth and tips it into his gullet. Alcohol burns his larynx, plops into his stomach, and spreads to his head in a slow, warm wave. Green sparks instantly explode before his eyes. Home-brewed liquor’s strong, it’s good. He exhales slowly and quietly, and looks up at Kuznets. Kuznets’s eyes are mean, like a dog’s, and his mouth is a straight line.
“She was rusty, like” – Ignatov squeezes the burlap in his fists, kneading at it – “like …”
Kuznets takes the mug from Ignatov’s hands and refills it.
“I can’t!”
“Drink!”
The tin rim clinks against Ignatov’s strong teeth: he’s grasping at the mug and drinking. The home brew pours in as easily and smoothly as if it were oil. The green sparks in front of his eyes fuse, flow, and beckon. So what now? Get soused, completely blotto? He’s never once in his life been genuinely drunk, blacking out, falling down. Feeling regret, Ignatov takes the empty mug from his mouth and breathes out. His eyelids grow heavy, closing.
“Now, you listen.” Kuznets’s voice is stern and clipped. “I have no obligation to relieve you of your poor goners.”
“Huh?” Ignatov has trouble lifting his eyelids. Kuznets flickers, warps, and doubles. There are already four, not just two, mean, unblinking eyes driving into Ignatov.
“I’ll drop off everybody that’s left at the location.”
“Wh-where?”
“Somewhere! We’ll find a suitable place.”
“Erm …”
Ignatov’s looking through dirty window glass. Out there, on a distant shore, the pointed tops of endless spruce trees extend beyond the horizon and rock in the wind.
“Hold on a minute …” Ignatov turns back to Kuznets. He can’t manage to catch his gaze at all – he has too many eyes, the angry devil. “In the taiga? Without equip … equipment?”
“It’s an order,” Kuznets say flintily.
The burlap nearly slips from Ignatov’s chest and he catches at it, wrapping himself up again.
“They’ll croak,” he says quietly.
Now they can hear the loud rattling of the boat’s motor.
“You have to understand that we need that settlement!” Kuznets, who’d divided in two, finally merges into one.
“You want to put a dot on the map?” Ignatov takes the bottle by its narrow neck to splash something into the empty mug for himself. “Conquering the shores of the great Angara? And the people? The hell with them? New ones will be born?”
Kuznets grabs the bottle’s thick middle but Ignatov won’t give it back.
“Quiet!” Kuznets pulls it toward himself. “Who sank the barge?”
“It was a leaky barge! Leaky, as leaky as a rotten old stump!”
“Were your railroad cars leaky, too? Half the people scattered along the way, half escaped … Or maybe it’s your hands that are leaky, Ignatov? Or your head?”
“But I brought them all the way across the country!” Ignatov groans and attempts to pull Kuznets’s tenacious fingers from the slippery glass. “I dragged them along the rails for half a year to deliver them to you, you ass. And now you want to send them right off to the taiga? To feed the wolves?”
“No, my dear man, you’re going to feed the wolves,” Kuznets hisses right into his ear, his hot breath enveloping Ignatov. “Because you’re staying with them. As the commandant.”
The bottle slides away, remaining in Kuznets’s big paws. Kuznets sputters, steadies his breathing, and wipes his drenched forehead.
“Temporarily, of course,” he says, not looking at Ignatov as he pours home brew into the mug for him with evil generosity. “What, you want me to fuss around with your invalids? A couple dozen old people? Who shoved them in the hold? Me? Wasn’t that you? If you’d brought them in the open, on the deck, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. But you cooked up this mess so you’re going to eat it. You’ll sit with them a week and guard them until I bring a new batch and a permanent commandant.”
After a loud thud, the bottle’s standing back on the table. “What’re you doing, Kuznets?” Ignatov’s voice is husky, as if he has a cold.
The burlap falls to the floor and Ignatov is left in his birthday suit. Kuznets casts him a stern gaze:
“That’s an order, special assignments employee Ignatov.”
He hurls the familiar gray “Case” folder on the table and leaves. Ignatov grabs the mug with both hands and pours home brew into himself. Its coolness streams down his chin, neck, and bare chest.
“Matches. Salt. Fishing tackle.”
Kuznets crouches as he opens each of the sacks and parcels that lie on the rocks, poking a firm finger into them. Ignatov’s standing alongside him, teetering slightly. He’s wearing a uniform that’s still half-damp and wrinkled (it’s clear they’ve wrung it out hard and flapped it in the wind), and his holster is attached crookedly, but he doesn’t notice. Kuznets’s voice reaches him from a distance, as if from the other shore. Green sparks are still floating before his eyes, blocking out a distant horizon of boundless hills jagged with spruce trees, the dark gray Angara water, the launch rocking in it, and the wooden rowboat by the shore, where a couple of soldiers are waiting.
“Saws. Knives. Kettles.” Kuznets looks at Ignatov’s sleepy face with its drooping eyelids. “I’m telling you, you’re going to boil up fish soup.”
Some sort of recollection weakly stirs in his memory.
“And grouse!” Ignatov raises a shaking finger. “And grouse in champagne sauce, is that possible?”
“It’s possible.” Kuznets stands up and brushes off his knees. “Sorry, but I’m not leaving provisions. You’ll somehow take care of that yourselves. There’s ammunition” – he kicks a small, taut sack and something clinks heavily inside – “enough for all the wild beasts in the taiga. Well, and your wretched people, too, if they don’t obey. And this” – he takes a heavy, nearly full bottle from one soldier’s hands – “is for you. So you’re not sad at night.”
Ignatov recognizes it right away. He smiles, takes it, and embraces the cool glass; the liquid splashes promisingly inside: Thank you, brother. Kuznets slides the gray “Case” folder between Ignatov and the bottle.
“Well, commandant,” he says, “stay strong. I’ll send assistance soon.”
Ignatov stoops and neatly, slowly, places the bottle on the rocks, so as not to spill the treasure. The folder falls next to it.
“W-wait …” His tongue is tied, as if it’s not his own. “I wanted to ask you about, to ask …”
He straightens up and looks around, but Kuznets is gone. There are just two oars gleaming in the distance. The rowboat is headed toward the launch.
“Where are you going?” Ignatov whispers in surprise. “Kuznets, where are you going?”
They’re already lifting the boat onto the launch. Ignatov ta
kes an unsteady step and his foot clangs against something: long, thin one-handed saws lying on wet burlap. Are these really saws? They’re going to saw lumber with these flimsy things?
“Where are you going, Kuznets?” Ignatov raises a hand, waves, and takes a couple of steps along the shore.
The launch lets out a high, sustained whistle in parting. The motor sneezes and barks, then chugs evenly, and the launch turns around.
“Where are you going?” Ignatov yells, continuing to run in pursuit. “Where? Wait!”
The launch leaves, shrinking.
“Wait!” Ignatov runs into the water. “Where?”
His fingers grope wildly for the holster and tear out the revolver. A cold wave splashes into his boots. Ignatov is trudging in water up to his knees, then to his waist.
“Where’ve you taken us, you son of a bitch? Where?”
“Air … air … air …” responds the echo, flying along the Angara in pursuit of the dark blue dot of the launch. But it’s already dissolving on the horizon.
“Where? WHERE? WHERE?”
Ignatov squeezes the trigger. The shot crashes, loud and booming.
Someone behind him is sobbing, frightened. The exiles are standing on the shore, huddled together and clutching lean bundles with their things, their faces gaunt, dark. Ignatov can feel their fearful eyes boring into him – the huge eyes of pregnant Zuleikha, the peasants’ gloomy stare, the lost gaze of the Leningrad remainders, and Gorelov’s crazed glare.
He helplessly slaps the water with his revolver and looks up at the sky. Something small and white is floating toward him from a black cloud. Snow.
PART THREE
TO LIVE
THIRTY
When viewed from the cliffs, the Angara is plainly visible. The splendid green left shore swells steeply, like risen dough in a vat, and its bright emerald reflection falls into the river’s leaden mirror. The water twists around lazily like a wide piece of heavy fabric before departing for the blueness of the horizon, toward the Yenisei. To where Kuznets’s launch recently departed from.
Zuleikha Page 21