Zuleikha

by Guzel Yakhina

  Ikonnikov gulps angrily from his bowl. He chews and removes a thin, crooked fish bone from his mouth using fingers stained with ultramarine and cobalt.

  “No, not at all, nothing of the kind!” Konstantin Arnoldovich fidgets on the bench, squashing the bread in his small hand. “Now you, Ilya Petrovich, what truly important thing did you create when you were at liberty? Twenty-three busts with mustaches?”

  “Twenty-four,” Izabella corrects him, neatly tilting her bowl away from herself and spooning out the last remaining brownish leaves in cloudy gray broth.

  “And you would have sculpted that many more!” Konstantin Arnoldovich’s hand hammers threateningly at the table.

  Gorelov rises at the guards’ table and surveys the dining hall, looking concerned about the noise.

  Izabella slaps her husband’s hand affectionately.

  “And here” – Sumlinsky can’t calm down so he’s speaking quickly and loudly – “you’re Raphael! Michelangelo! You’re not painting a clubhouse, it’s the Sistine Chapel. Do you yourself realize that?”

  “By the way, Ilya Petrovich, my dear fellow!” Izabella is firmly and significantly squeezing her husband’s hand. “You promised to show us –”

  The gong – made from a large tin plate that hangs by the dining-hall entrance – suddenly groans, swings, and quivers from a strong strike. A revolver is vigorously pounding it. People exchange glances, set their spoons aside, rise from the tables with their heads down, as usual; some pull the caps off the tops of their heads. The commandant bursts in, wearing wrinkled, mud-spotted breeches he’s somehow pulled over his drawers, and a dirty under-shirt tautly caught up in uneven suspenders. A lock of brown hair, slightly touched with white, hangs over his eyebrows and his sharp cheekbones wear a brush of uneven stubble.

  “Get up!” the commandant booms. He seems to reel slightly from his own shout. “To work! You think I’m going to spoil you?”

  Gorelov hastily wipes off his hands on his brown minder’s uniform jacket, gets up from the table, and hurries to Ignatov.

  “They’ve already finished their work, comrade commandant!” Gorelov’s standing at attention, with his chest bulging and his short-fingered hands stretched at his sides.

  Ignatov casts a muddled glance at two hundred bent heads and two hundred dishes of unfinished thin soup on the tables.

  “You’re gobbling it down, you sons of bitches,” he bitterly concludes.

  “Yes, sir, comrade commandant!” Gorelov answers, with such resonance and passion it makes the ears ring.

  “Insatiable vermin.” Ignatov’s voice is quiet and tired. “You feed and feed them … When will you ever get enough …”

  “They worked up an appetite, comrade commandant! Striving to meet their daily quotas. Fulfilling the plan!”

  “Ah, the plan …” Ignatov’s brows gently rise along his wrinkled forehead. “And so?”

  “They exceeded their quotas, comrade commandant! By an entire ten cubic meters!”

  “Good.” Ignatov is walking through the rows, peering into sullen faces with lips pressed together, eyes lowered, and cheekbones tense. “Very good.”

  His unsteady hand slaps the sunken scoliotic chest of a skinny, stooped man with a closely shaven head and large ears that stick out like a child’s. Ignatov takes a bowl from the table – clumps of something grayish-green splash around in it – and puts it on the man’s head, like a hat.

  “We must abide by the plan!” From his warrior-like height, Ignatov bends toward the skinny man, looks confidingly into eyes narrowed from fear, and whispers into ears with thin soup trickling into them. “We won’t get anywhere without the plan!” He shakes his head with grief and knocks the bowl with his revolver. The sound is muted and dulled, unlike the gong.

  Greens mixed with fish heads are sliding down the skinny man’s face. Ignatov nods with satisfaction and threatens everyone else with the barrel of his gun, as if it were an index finger telling them to watch out. He turns and slowly goes to the exit. Finally, he swipes his revolver at the gong. Now that sounds better!

  After Ignatov’s footsteps have faded, the exiles sit down one at a time, silently take their spoons, and continue eating. Vibrations from the gong hang in the air, creeping into their ears. Still standing, the skinny man pulls the dish from his head, breathing shallowly and wiping his dirty face with his sleeve; someone warily touches him on the shoulder.

  “Here,” says Achkenazi, sullen as usual. He holds out another dish, filled to the brim with soup that’s thick, obviously from the very bottom of the kettle. “Take it, Zaseka. I’m giving you seconds.”

  “Our commandant’s essentially a decent person,” says Konstantin Arnoldovich, leaning across the table toward Ikonnikov. “He’s moral in his own way. He has his own principles – even if he’s not fully aware of them – as well as an undeniable inclination for justice –”

  “A good man,” Izabella cuts him off. “It’s just he’s very troubled.”

  The faces started appearing to him in 1932. For some reason it was before falling asleep that he remembered the first time he’d seen Zuleikha, sitting like a sack on the large sledge, wrapped in a thick headscarf and an oversized sheepskin coat. Then her husband’s face suddenly flashed, with bushy brows gathered in a lump on his forehead, a nose with wide and fat nostrils, and a chin like a split hoof. Ignatov saw him as clearly as a photograph. He placed no significance on it and fell asleep, but then Murtaza up and appeared in Ignatov’s dream, looking at him silently. Ignatov woke up from that gaze and rolled on his other side, irritated, and then he dreamt of the husband again. He wouldn’t leave.

  It had gone on from there. The dead began coming at night and watching him. Each time he looked at yet another guest, Ignatov excruciatingly recollected the where, the when, and the how. He would wake up from the pressure of each memory, which would remain fresh, even after turning the pillow over for the tenth time so the cold side was on his cheek. That one was near Shemordan, winter of 1930; that one was in Varzob Gorge, near Dushanbe, in 1922; that one was on the Sviyaga River, in 1920.

  He’d killed many in gunfights and battles without seeing their faces, but they came and watched him, too. He recognized them in some strange way that’s only possible in dreams, by the turn of a neck, the shape of the back of a head, slouched shoulders, or a saber’s stroke. He recalled them all, from the very first, in 1918. They were toughened, dangerous, out-and-out enemies to a man: Denikinites, Czechs in the White Army, Basmachi, and kulaks. He reassured himself that not one was to be pitied. If he were to meet them, he would kill them again without hesitation. He reassured himself but he’s almost stopped sleeping.

  Those strange, silent dreams – where faces long-forgotten and completely unfamiliar look at him wordlessly and impassively, not asking for anything and not wishing to tell him anything – are more agonizing than the nightmare about the sinking Clara, a dream that Ignatov has stopped having in recent years for some reason. His long-term, insomniac tiredness doesn’t help, nor does the warmth of a female body beside him. Sometimes home brew helps.

  And so Ignatov is glad of Kuznets’s unexpected arrival. It’s much more pleasant to drink with him than alone or with Gorelov, who’s growing more insolent – and more brazenly so – with every passing year.

  Ignatov’s standing on the front steps of the commandant’s headquarters when he throws his arms wide open and shouts, “He’s here!” after seeing the chief’s long black launch beyond a hill.

  “Huh, so you were expecting me, my good man,” Kuznets smirks as he jumps ashore, accurately assessing the strength of the stale alcohol on Ignatov’s breath and the circles under eyes as black as coal.

  Kuznets shows up for regular inspections every month or two, and after the formality of taking a walk around Semruk and the logging sites, they head to the commandant’s headquarters to sit for a while. They sit thoroughly, sometimes for two or three days. Gorelov doesn’t participate, though he does provide ample ass
istance. He himself will bring food from the dining hall. Under Gorelov’s personal supervision, Achkenazi takes from his pantries sun-dried bream and preserved lingonberries stored away for the occasion, and braises herbs and game procured in the forest in short order; fruit puddings and drinks are also served “for a sweet and pleasant start to the day.” In addition, Gorelov will command bathhouse preparations, ensuring the fire is stoked and bundles of leaves readied (the bathhouse was built the previous year beyond a river bend some distance from the settlement and they take turns bathing: men one Sunday, women the next); and he will make the women scour Kuznets’s launch, moored at the tiny wooden berth, until it sparkles.

  By all appearances, their get-together can be expected to be genial this time. Gorelov sweats profusely as he drags Kuznets’s case up from the shore and it’s as heavy as if it were stone, with something clinking and gurgling inside, sounding muffled and expensive. Kuznets is wary of the local home brew so usually brings his own drink with him, something he has purchased.

  They take a walk along the shore and inspect the timber landing by the river, which is swarming with people and filled with high piles of logs as tall as a person. They go inside the freshly constructed log building that will be a school; classes are set to begin in September. They admire the uprooting of stumps on new land for crops. Their experiments with cultivating grains have been successful and it’s been decided to use another piece of the taiga as a field. They look at each other with relief: Well, so, is it time to sit for a while? And they go.

  Their conversations at the table turn out to be warm, even heartfelt. Ignatov knows Kuznets is taking detailed mental notes of everything he says, whether sober, tipsy, or passing out from drunken intoxication, but Ignatov isn’t afraid of that because he has nothing to hide. All his sins are as prominently on display as Kuznets’s mustache. There’s even something attractive about that, some special joy that smacks of vengeance – drinking with a person from whom you have no secrets and can no longer keep secrets, but who might himself have secrets. So let Kuznets tense up, keep himself in check, and hold his tongue, afraid of letting something slip. He, Ignatov, sits down at the table with ease and joy, as if he’s offering up his own bared soul for show.

  “Where’s this from?” Kuznets takes a small yellow turnip the size of a child’s fist, with a long and fluffy green tail like a comet, from a table set with dishes, bowls, cups, and kettles of various sizes.

  “Well, I have this … agronomist here,” says Ignatov, gulping impatiently as he pours crisp-sounding Moscow vodka into glasses with sharp, gleaming facets.

  They usually drink from mugs but Kuznets brought glasses with him this time; he apparently wants to sit for a while in good taste, the urban way. A lush green label the color of young conifer needles on the bottle’s round side promises pure fifty-percent enjoyment, guaranteed by the USSR’s Glavspirtprom trademark. They finally clink glasses. The turnip is sharp and juicy, with a hint of gentle bitterness, so it turns out to be just the thing with the vodka.

  “Let’s consider our meeting open,” says Kuznets. He eats his turnip whole, leaves and all, and waves his fat fingers over the glasses, gesturing as if to say: Come on, hurry up with the second now. “Here you go, Vanya, first item: kulak growth, damn it to hell.”

  Kulak growth is what the authorities have begun calling the rapid accumulation of wealth among exiled peasants. After being sent thousands of kilometers from their native homes, they’re the ones who’ve recovered six or eight years after the blow, adapting somewhat in alien places and contriving, even there, to earn an extra kopek, set it aside, and use it later to buy up personal inventory and even cattle. In brief, the peasantry that lost absolutely everything is kulakizing all over again, and of course that’s completely intolerable. And thus a wise decision was made at the highest levels of government to stop the growth immediately, punish those guilty, and organize the kulaks (who practiced their ineradicable individualism so craftily even in exile) into collective farms. A wave of punitive actions for permitting so much rekulakization had already swept through the ranks of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, adding to the relentless flow of repressions during 1937 and 1938.

  They tackle the first question on the agenda quickly. The bottle doesn’t even have a chance to empty, for what is there to yammer about anyway when everything’s clear? Forbid private construction (in Semruk, a few especially nimble people have already finished building themselves small, solid houses, moved out of the barracks, and started families) and hold a general meeting with an explanatory discussion, cautioning against kulakization.

  “Oh, yes, we will hold one,” Ignatov promises the green label, picking at its fancy edge with his fingernail. “Oh, will we caution …”

  Their session’s second item for discussion flows organically from the first: organizing a local collective enterprise.

  Back in January of 1932, the USSR’s Council of Labor and Defense issued a resolution “On seeds for special migrants,” under which labor settlements were to be regularly supplied with grain seeds so they could independently produce their own bread and cereals. Seeds have been provided to Semruk, too. There’s oats, barley, wheat, and, for some reason, even warmth-loving hemp, which doesn’t have enough time to mature in the meager Siberian sun. Sumlinsky has taken on agronomist responsibilities and has been handling the job fairly well. Ever since receiving Ignatov’s cautious permission, he has had the audacity to order additional seed resources from the central office over the last two years (the insolent man even indicated specific sorts!), and thus turnip made its appearance at the settlement, along with carrots, bulb onions, and radishes. Sumlinsky has been obsessed for two years with the idea of growing melons but Ignatov, fearing ridicule, has forbidden him from including melon seeds in the order. Their harvests cannot be considered abundant, though they should be worth the working hours invested. They eat their own bread at the settlement and occasionally vegetables, too. It’s true the grain they prepare doesn’t last the winter, but they’re now readying another field where Sumlinsky intends to grow autumn-seeded crops.

  The second bottle has emptied; ten of Kuznets’s expensive cigarettes have been smoked; all the turnips and radishes, which were as small as peas and awfully sour to the taste, as well as the supper that Gorelov brought (flaky fried fish in breadcrumbs, still sizzling with smoked pork fat) have been eaten; and the kerosene lamp is already burning lemon-yellow through the thick blue-gray smoke: but the question still isn’t closed. Kuznets wants the Semruk collective farm to supply products not only to the settlement but also to the “mainland.”

  “What am I going to supply you with?” Ignatov shakes a pale green scallion with feathery, white-tinged leaves in front of Kuznets’s raspberry-colored face. “These vegetables are only enough for one meal for the settlement. The wheat barely matures! We work for a year and eat for a month! Four hundred mouths!”

  “Then try harder!” Kuznets tears the onion from Ignatov’s fingers, stuffs it in his broad maw, and grinds it with his teeth. “What do you think, my dear man? That we’re establishing a collective farm so it’s just your own kisser chowing on turnip? You’ve got four hundred pairs of hands! Be ever so kind! Labor along and share with the state!”

  They send for Sumlinsky. He runs up, disheveled from sleep and wearing a jacket he’s tossed on to cover his underclothes. They splash something into a mug for him but Konstantin Arnoldovich refuses to drink and just stands by the table, frightened, with his cheeks wrinkled and his hair sticking up. After grasping the essence of the question, he grows pensive, furrows his brow, and smoothes his long, sparse beard, which has taken on an utterly goat-like look over the years.

  “Why not supply?” he says. “We can supply, too.”

  Ignatov slams his hands on the table out of annoyance. Here I am protecting these fools and then they go sticking their necks in the noose on their own. After the hand gesture, he lowers his head to the table, too; all the talk
ing has worn him out. Kuznets is roaring with laughter: Nice job, old man. I love people like you!

  “But,” adds Sumlinsky, “there’s a series of necessary conditions.”

  And so he counts on his pointy fingers. “No fewer than fifteen people as workers in the collective farm, the sturdiest and handiest men, and they have to be on a permanent basis, not like now, as volunteers and with other assignments on their days off: that’s first. The seed stock has to be in strict accordance with the preliminary order I personally compiled. And I need the right to refuse rotten or spoiled grain if that’s what’s supplied under the guise of seed stock, like in 1934. That’s the second thing. Bring new metal tools for uprooting trees because the wooden ones are torture. Sometimes we work with rocks, like primitive people, but we need pickaxes, crowbars, spades, hoes, and pitchforks of all sizes. I’ll compile a list. That’s third. Agricultural tools are another matter. A lot of these are needed, too. I’ll specify those in a list in a separate section so nobody’s confused: that’s fourth. Definitely beasts of burden, five or more oxen – we can’t plow without them; they could come toward next spring, toward the beginning of sowing: that’s fifth. Now fertilizers …”

  As Kuznets listens, his neck, which is already crimson, is gradually turning purple, too. Kuznets can’t contain himself by the time all the fingers on one of Sumlinsky’s hands have been used and he’s moving on to the next.

  “Who are you anyway,” he hisses, “you bastard, setting conditions for me, Zinovy Kuznets?”

  Konstantin Arnoldovich lowers his hands and wilts.

  “Probably nobody,” he says. “But at one time I was head of the applied botany department at the Institute of Experimental Agronomy – there is such a place in Leningrad. And a very long time ago – one might say in a previous life – I was a member of the scientific committee at the Ministry of Arable Farming and State Property. That was back in Petersburg.”