Gorelov’s boots thud toward the exit and he disappears out the door. Ikonnikov crawls to the corner, still on his knees. He tosses around empty crates, scraps of plywood, and rags, and finds the hidden bottle. He tears the stopper out with his teeth and takes a couple of long, gurgling swallows. Shuffling uncertainly in the darkness, he returns to the ladder. He takes the kerosene lamp and palette, and crawls up under the ceiling. He sits on the upper step for a couple of minutes, observing the boundless dark blue expanse with transparent, fluffy clouds stretching across it. He scoops a generous amount of cadmium from the palette and smears it on the ceiling – an enormous, thick crimson blotch explodes on the firmament.
As soon as Kuznets arrives, he goes straight to the clubhouse to look at the agitational art. After stepping into the middle of the room and drilling his eyes into the ceiling, he stands, eyebrows moving and getting a feel for things. Ignatov is next to him. Gorelov trails along with them, too, and he’s milling around by the door, casting shifty glances at the chief. Ikonnikov himself is on hand, holding up the wall. He’s listless and downcast; he never did go to sleep last night, and his hand keeps grasping at his side, under the ribs, as if his stomach is seizing up. When the silence drags on, he decides to defuse the situation a little.
“Allow me,” he says. “As the artist, I’d like to say a few words about the concept … I mean about the main idea.”
The chiefs are silent, breathing loudly.
“This agitational art represents an allegory, a cumulative image of Soviet society.” Ikonnikov raises his hand, in turn, to each of the figures soaring in the sky. “The protector of our fatherland stands for our valorous armed forces. The mother with the baby is for all Soviet women. The red agronomist – a peasant engaged in farming – embodies working the land and the prosperity of our country that flows from it, and the doctor represents protecting the population from illnesses, along with all Soviet scientific thought.”
Kuznets is rocking from heel to toe and back again, and his boots squeak from the strain.
“The army and the civilian population, science and agriculture are directed, in a unified impetus, toward the red banner, a symbol of revolution.”
In the center of the ceiling, where yesterday the tall sky had been shining dark blue, there hovers a giant crimson streamer resembling a magic carpet. It’s so large that it seems it will fall any minute, covering all the little people standing under it with their heads craned upward. The weighty inscription, “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” is emblazoned in thick gold and flows along its folds. It’s as if the four figures in the mural’s corners have immediately shrunk in size; they’re now devoutly extending their arms in a set direction, toward the banner.
It came out beautifully, Ignatov thinks with surprise as he scrutinizes the inspired faces of the people soaring above them. It’s truthful, in a genuine way. Nice work, artist. You didn’t betray us.
He takes half a year daubing out those small people then does the flag in one night, Gorelov laments to himself.He was loafing, the snake.
“Well,” Kuznets finally utters. “It makes a striking impression. I commend you. An artel can be entrusted to a master like this.”
And he whacks Ikonnikov’s slumped shoulder so Ikonnikov barely stays on his feet.
The chiefs leave but Ilya Petrovich stays in the club. He sits down on the ladder, lowers his head into hands smudged with paint, and sits that way for a long time. When he finally lifts his face, there’s an unfamiliar breath of redness and heat from the ceiling – it’s the banner.
Of course those are angels. Yuzuf’s mother has told him about them – about fereshte: they soar high up in the sky, feed on sunlight, and sometimes stand behind people’s shoulders, unseen, and defend them when they’re in trouble, though they rarely show themselves, only to announce something very important.
Yuzuf has even asked Ilya Petrovich if he’s drawn angels on the ceiling. Ilya Petrovich started smiling. “I might just have done that,” he said.
One time, shortly before the mural was finished and when Ikonnikov wasn’t at the clubhouse, Yuzuf had climbed the scaffolding and carefully studied the mural up close. At first he lay there a long time, looking at the golden-haired doctor, who was looking at Yuzuf. The doctor’s eyes were bright, a sharp dark blue, and his hair as luxurious as a sheep’s. He looks like our doctor, Yuzuf decided, only he’s young and doesn’t have a bald spot.
Then he looked at the agronomist. This one was even younger, just a youth, and he was dreamy and tender, with velvety cheeks and a rapturous gaze. He didn’t resemble anyone; there were no faces that joyful in Semruk.
The warrior was another matter: his eyes were stern and stubborn, and his mouth was a straight line so he looked exactly like the commandant. It was surprising how people and angels could look alike.
The woman with the child was green-eyed, with dark braids twisted on the back of her head, and the child in her arms was tiny and half-blind. Yuzuf didn’t know children were that small when they were born. He wondered if an angel’s child would be an angel, too, when it grew up. He didn’t have time to think that through because Ikonnikov had come in.
“So,” Ikonnikov asked, “did you examine it? And who are they, do you think?”
Yuzuf came down from the scaffolding and dusted himself off very seriously.
“Of course, they’re angels,” he said, “the most ordinary ones. Anybody can see that. What, you think I’m a little boy or something and don’t understand things like that?”
THE BLACK TENT
A huge log, about one and a half cubic meters, crashes from the riverside timber landing into the water, its cut yellow end spinning. People are already running over to it, pressing their hands into it and pushing it away from shore. They lead it deeper, until the water’s up to their necks, and release it where the Angara itself will catch the log and carry it off. Log drivers standing in boats and holding long pike poles will straighten the logs’ course, gathering them closer together, toward the center. Metal hooks at the ends of their pikes catch logs that stray from the flock, returning them to the channel. The long caravan of floating timber will stretch down toward the mouth of the Angara, toward the anchorage point, with the log drivers following. Barges are already there by a log boom, and people are waiting to fish out the logs, transfer them across the Yenisei, and pull them toward Maklakovo, to the lumber mill.
Workers from Semruk float the loose timber when the Angara is at its lowest levels and has calmed – it’s dangerous in high water and the timber would be damaged. Some roll the logs into the water, where another group rounds them up for the log drivers – the most reliable and tested – to take to Maklakovo.
They’d begun work today even before daybreak and the Angara is already teeming with the dark spines of logs; it’s as if there’s a school of giant fish jostling in the river. When the sun reaches its zenith, the log rollers are almost as wet (from sweat) as the rear crew, who wade around in the water pushing the logs; the first group of log drivers has already disappeared behind a bend in the river, heading toward the Yenisei.
“Lunch break!”
People sink to the ground. Some look at the remaining piles, others watch the spines of logs rattling along the river in the distance, or gaze at the clear July sky. Spoons clink and the reeking smell of homemade tobacco wafts around. From this part of the riverbank, there’s a good view of the Semruk pier in the distance, where Kuznets is boarding his gleaming brown launch, barely staying on his feet thanks to a bad hangover. A half-dressed Ignatov clings to him, reeling, shouting, and waving his arms as if he’s making a demand or wants to ask for something, but Gorelov holds the commandant, allowing Kuznets to break loose and jump on the launch. “I can’t … ! Let me go! … I can’t be here any longer!” carries Ignatov’s desperate wail.
“Sons of bitches,” one of the log rollers quietly says, with hatred.
The uproar they created back on that autumn night in Semr
uk – firing on live people – has been nicknamed Walpurgis Night. Fortunately, there were only injuries and nobody was killed.
The launch finally breaks away from the dock, coughs, picks up steam, and heads toward the bend in the river, carefully skirting the accumulated logs. Gorelov releases the commandant, then throws his hands in the air as if in apology and presses them to his chest. Ignatov isn’t listening. He jumps into a small boat that’s bobbing at a berth and rows after Kuznets’s launch. The boat is just a small rowboat, so it flies quickly along the waves and the current carries it into the channel, pulling it into the tail end of a heavy flotilla of logs.
“He’ll get caught the hell up,” say dispassionate voices in the crowd. “Be crushed to pieces.”
People look up from their dishes. Some peer and half-stand to have a better look while others continue gulping indifferently. The loud, terrifying cracking of logs can be heard at a distance.
Ignatov notices the danger too late. He’s pulling the oars with all his might but can no longer row away and the boat smashes into a shiny jumble of moving logs in the middle of the river. He tries to push off one of them with an oar but the oar immediately snaps. A couple of seconds later, Ignatov appears to be crouching and shrinking in height, and then neither he nor the boat is visible. His brown hair flashes just once more among the frothy logs, and that’s all.
“Die, you bastard,” utters Zaseka, a frail little man wearing ragged overalls.
Someone suddenly darts away from the onlookers and rushes headlong toward the river, pushing a boat prepared for the log drivers into the water and jumping in. He goes after the caravan, desperately working a pole to drive the boat toward the churning porridge of logs and froth. It’s Lukka. People watch from the knoll as he’s flung from side to side, kneeling on half-bent legs, mashing at the Angara with the pole. He’s rapidly carried downstream but manages to steer the boat a bit to the side, edging and pushing his way stubbornly between the logs to where Ignatov’s wet head last flashed. He suddenly tosses the pole into the boat and bends toward the water.
“Has he found him?”
And now everyone has dropped their dishes, spoons, and unfinished hand-rolled cigarettes, and is dashing toward the river, crowding, making a racket, and running into the water. Several boats spring out into the Angara, tearing along the shore, downstream with the current, preparing to meet them, and help them out of the wooden jumble. People fling ropes, extend their pikes, yell …
“Come on, come on!” Gorelov shouts as hard as he can, his boots sloshing in water up to his ankles, and desperately waving at the tiny red-haired figure in the middle of the Angara.
Lukka catches his pike pole on one of the lines that’s been tossed and then they somehow haul Ignatov’s boat to shore and raise it to the Semruk pier. It’s crushed like a little paper boat and already half-filled with water that’s a rich red – Ignatov’s lying on the bottom, wheezing large, bloody bubbles and his legs are as awkwardly twisted as a puppet’s.
He comes to during the night, as if he’s been struck. He sits up in bed. Where am I?
A taut gauze cap is stretched over his forehead, his right arm is immobilized against his shoulder, and his left leg feels like a dead weight. The pillows around him are dim white in the dull moonlight; people are breathing loudly. Ah, yes, the infirmary. It seems like he’s already been here a long time, several days, maybe even weeks. He wakes up each night, regains consciousness – this is agonizing and takes a long time – and remembers; then he limply leans back and falls asleep again. Faces flash: Leibe, Gorelov, and other patients. Sometimes a spoon materializes in his mouth and he obediently swallows either cool water or a warm and liquidy stew that flows slowly down his throat. The same kind of thoughts – liquidy and viscous – splash listlessly in his head, too.
But everything’s different today because his head is clear; everything inside it is in good order, quick, and precise, and his body is unexpectedly strong. Ignatov’s healthy hand grasps at the strings digging into his chin and he pulls to unknot them, tearing the gauze over his head and throwing off the little cap. He peels off a couple of wads of cotton stuck to the top of his head and a light breeze from the vent window gently flutters at his shaved skull, caressing his skin. He’s free!
He leans into the edge of the bed, wanting to lower his feet to the floor. His right foot somehow obeys him and creeps out from under the blanket but the second has become unliftable and shoots with sharp pain. He throws off the blanket and sees his leg is tightly wound in gauze, like a swaddled infant, and half his foot is gone.
He breathes deeply and rapidly, gazing at his bandaged foot, then turns away. He notices a freshly planed crutch leaning against the bed. There weren’t crutches in Semruk until now. Meaning they’d crafted it themselves. For him? He grabs it and launches it into the darkness with all his might. There’s a crash and the clang of some vials; one of the patients raises himself up, grumbles, and drops his head to the pillow again. Quiet returns.
Ignatov sits and listens to his own breathing. Then he stands up with a start (his ribs burn his torso) and hops on one foot to where the crutch flew – there it is, lying by the wall. He bends and picks it up. The crutch smells strongly of pine pitch and it’s sturdy so it didn’t break into smithereens. The hand grips are wound with rags for softness, and there’s a heel from someone’s boot nailed to the bottom so it won’t thud too much. It was made sensibly, to last. (Thank you for that, at least.) Ignatov inserts the crutch under his arm and hobbles toward the door. There’s a sound of shuffling feet behind him. The sleepy doctor, rubbing his eyes, has come out of the living quarters because of the noise.
“Where are you going?” he clucks behind Ignatov. “You have a traumatic brain injury! And what about the stitches? The broken bones? Your foot!”
Ignatov thumps the crutch at the infirmary door, which swings open with a crash, and walks out into the night.
The commandant lives in his own home from that day on. Leibe comes up once a day to examine him and Zuleikha changes his bandages in the evenings.
She arrives and, gazing at the floor, goes to place the basin of hot water on the table, setting it alongside rolls of bandages she laundered and thoroughly boiled the day before. Ignatov is already sitting up in bed, watching. Has he been waiting?
She begins with his head. The doctor has strictly forbidden the commandant to remove the dressing from his head and Ignatov submitted after making a bit of noise; they are no longer winding a little cap on him but making a simple circular dressing instead. Zuleikha places her palms on the warm back of his head, which is overgrown in thick brown stubble with sparks of gray, then unwinds a long bandage, runs a hot damp rag along his pale skin and around fresh, zigzagging burgundy-colored stitches, and wipes it dry. She swabs the stitches with home brew that smells very bitter, then winds a clean bandage over them.
Now it’s time for the arm. Groaning from the effort, she somehow removes an uncooperative shirt from Ignatov’s large, warm body; he doesn’t help, not even with his healthy arm. She sees that his huge bruises are gradually changing color, lightening, and fading. Pale, flawless skin has appeared under them. She remembers Murtaza’s curly-haired belly and hairy shoulders, and his powerful trunk, like a tree’s, unembraceably broad in the shoulders and just as bulky at the waist. Everything is different for Ignatov, who has sharp shoulders pointing in opposite directions and a long torso that’s narrow at the waist. She removes the bandage, bathes the heavy, supple arm, which is stitched substantially in two places (he winces from pain, tolerating it), and all the bruises and abrasions on his chest, ribs, and back. There’s a conspicuous deep old scar under his shoulder blade and she averts her eyes at the sight of it, as if she’s peeked at a secret not intended for her. Dry rag. Home brew. New dressing. Put the shirt back on.
She treats his foot last. She places the basin on the floor by the bed and kneels. She separates the stump from the gauze and bathes it, feeling Ignatov’s heavy
gaze on the top of her head. He holds his breath and groans, probably agonizing from fury rather than pain. She remembers washing Murtaza’s feet, if you could call them that: they were fat, broad hooves with the toes splayed in various directions. The black soles of his feet, coarsened from walking on soil, flaked and shed skin in her hands, like tree bark. Ignatov’s feet are long and slender with soles that are dry, smooth, and hard. His toes are probably handsome, too. Zuleikha doesn’t know this; she hasn’t seen his healthy foot.
She knows the rest of his body; she’s memorized it.
Wash thoroughly, wipe, swab, bandage.
Ignatov sits silently the whole time, his face turned to her. It’s as if he’s tracing her scent. She also thinks there’s an unbearable smell of honey. The hot water, the bandages, and even the home brew smell of honey. So does Ignatov’s body. And hair.
She tells herself not to raise her eyes from the floor. Not to touch more than necessary. Not to turn her head. To ball up the soiled gauze, wipe up the floor after herself, and get out, get out of there, launder the dressing rags in the icy Angara water, cool the hands, cheeks, and forehead; clench the jaw, squeeze the eyes shut, summon up in the mind’s eye a black tent that covers the commandant’s headquarters like a densely woven rug, and gallop away at breakneck speed, escape from him on a fast Argamak; heat water again tomorrow and go back up the path, to where Ignatov is already waiting for her, sitting on his tidied bed.
*
And that’s how they live for the whole remainder of the summer, until autumn.
In September, the doctor allows the dressings to be removed. By then, the sutures have already healed up and lightened. Today she’ll go to the commandant’s for the last time, to remove the bandages from his arm and head. They’ll still leave the dressing on the stump but Ignatov can change it himself now that he has two healthy arms.
Zuleikha Page 40