Snow is piling up early the next morning. The storm is blowing so hard and thick that it beats at the door, the windows are plastered in white, and the chimney howls like a pack of wolves. The lumbermen never go out into the taiga in blizzards like this; the hunters don’t go out, either.
Zuleikha touches Ignatov’s temple with a finger:
“At least, just this once, I can stay and look at you for longer.”
If she could, she would happily look at him all day.
“What’s to look at?” he says, covering her face with his own. “I’m afraid you’ll have to keep looking some other time …”
When she finally tears her head from the pillow, having fallen back into a deep slumber, the storm has died down and everything is absolutely still outside – no human voices, no knocking of axes, no dining-hall gong – as if the place were a ghost town. A dull yellow light’s trickling through the half-covered windows. Ignatov is still asleep, settled on his back. She straightens a blanket that has slid off him.
There’s a cautious crunch of footsteps around the house – someone’s walking in the snow along the walls. Is that dog Gorelov sniffing around again? A dark silhouette flashes in the little window. Zuleikha drops noiselessly from the bed, tosses a sheepskin coat over her bare shoulders, and slips outside. There they are, tracks – dark blue and deep, as if they’ve been scooped out with a ladle – running around the commandant’s headquarters.
“The dirty dog,” Zuleikha utters loudly and walks around the corner.
A large figure wearing long clothing is standing by the back window, leaning forward, and pressing their nose to the snow-powdered glass. The collar of a long-haired dog fur coat is raised, and a pointy-tipped fur cap towers over their head like the top of a minaret.
The Vampire Hag.
“You old crone.” Zuleikha walks right up to her mother-in-law; she could reach out and touch her with her hand. “You’ve come to drink my blood again?”
The Vampire Hag pulls her pale face back from the glass as if she’s heard and turns toward Zuleikha. Her forehead, eye sockets, and cheeks are all plastered in white snow, as if it were chalk, and that snow isn’t melting. Only the nostrils on the white mask move – black holes taking in air – and her purple lips quiver, too.
“Go,” Zuleikha says angrily and clearly. “Get away!”
The mask opens the hollow of its mouth, breathes out thick, raggedy steam, and hisses, barely audibly.
“He will punish …” she says and a gnarled finger with a long, bent nail rises toward the sky. “He will punish you for everything …”
“Get out of here!” Zuleikha is shouting; her body is consumed by the full force of her anger. The roots of her hair are heating up and her heart is beating so it pushes at her ribs. “Don’t you dare come to me again! This is my life and you can’t order me around anymore! Out! Out!”
Her mother-in-law turns her back and hurriedly hobbles toward the forest, leaning on her tall, gnarled walking stick. Her huge, heavy felt boots squeak deafeningly on the snow and the long, thin strands of her white braids swing behind her back, in time with her steps.
“Witch!” Zuleikha hurls snow after her. “You died long ago! And your son, too!”
The Vampire Hag lifts a bony finger again as she walks, shaking it threateningly and pointing upward without turning around. Her figure diminishes and the squeaking of her steps fades behind brownish, brush-like spruces. Zuleikha looks up at the copper moon burning solemnly on the stern dark blue-and-black horizon. The moon is completely round, like a freshly minted coin. Night? Already? So that’s why it’s so quiet around her …
Yuzuf! Has he gone to bed? Did he fall asleep alone? She dashes to the infirmary, stumbling as she runs, her felt boots scooping up snow. Yuzuf isn’t in bed, and his boots, sheepskin coat, and skis aren’t there, either. Her son must have broken the rule again, today of all days – he probably thought she went hunting like always and went to meet her, and hasn’t returned.
Zuleikha grabs her skis. She returns to the commandant’s headquarters and makes her way inside, trying not to creak the door. She removes Ignatov’s heavy rifle from its nail, takes a hefty cartridge clip out of the nightstand, and shoves it in her pocket, then thinks and takes another. She casts a glance at the peacefully sleeping Ignatov and slips out.
Two thin streaks from Yuzuf’s skis wind along the rich blue snow. She races after him, recognizing his route. From the clubhouse at the edge of the settlement, Yuzuf went up toward the frozen Chishme, then skirted along the shore to the crossing at Bear Rock, where he usually lies in wait for her under the rowan bush. He marked time there for a while because there are lots of overlapping tracks in every direction. Her little boy froze by the forest brook, waiting for his mother as she was giving herself to her lover in a rumpled bed soaked in hot sweat.
The tracks lead further, into the urman. Yuzuf obviously went to find her when she hadn’t turned up. Zuleikha dashes after him. Trees decorated in white tower around her, interfering; black shadows and yellowish-blue stripes of snow painted with moonlight flash in her eyes. Further, further. Deeper into the urman, deeper.
“Yuzuf!” she shouts into a thicket. A large shelf of snow falls from a high branch, crashing to the ground. “Ulym! My son!”
Yuzuf’s ski tracks are growing fainter under drifts of snow. They appear again for a while then disappear, and soon they’re gone completely. Where to now?
“Yuzuf!”
Zuleikha races ahead and little clouds of snow puff up from under her skis.
“Yuzuf!”
The inky-black tops of spruce trees are dancing on the dark blue firmament and bold sparkling stars glisten between them.
“Yuzuf!”
The urman is silent.
There it is, retribution for an impious life outside marriage with an infidel, with her husband’s killer. For preferring him to her own faith, her own husband, and her own son. The Vampire Hag was right. Heaven has punished Zuleikha.
Sinking into the snowdrifts, she forces her way through crackling, thorny juniper bushes. She creeps over fallen birch trunks covered in slippery rime and struggles to make out the path through a spiky spruce thicket. Her ski suddenly catches a branch and Zuleikha flies forward, tumbling down some sort of steep hillock, churning up snow, and snapping her skis. The hard, prickly coldness pounds at her face, getting into her eyes, ears, and mouth. Her hands flail at the snow as she somehow makes her way out of the drift. She sees a piece of a broken ski in front of her. Not her ski but her son’s.
“Yuzuuuuf!”
She’s no longer shouting, she’s howling. And someone in front of her is howling in response. Up to her waist in snow, with the splintered remnants of her skis tangled in low bushes, she makes her way to a small clearing that’s tightly bordered on all sides by trees.
There, in a crowded, uneven ring clustered around a tall, old spruce with a tilting top, sits a sharp-nosed gray pack, looking intently upward. It’s winter and the wolves are lean; their skin stretches over their ribs and their spines look bristly. They notice Zuleikha, turn their snouts for a moment, and growl but don’t leave their spot. One suddenly leaps high, as if he’s been tossed, and snaps his teeth at the sharp top of the spruce where there’s a small, dark, motionless spot.
Zuleikha walks straight at the wolves, striding almost mechanically and loading the rifle along the way. Several animals stand and slowly scatter to greet her. They surround her, quivering their lips, showing their fangs, and jerking their tails. One of them, with transparent yellow eyes and a torn ear, breaks away and is the first to jump.
She shoots. Then again and again. She loads as quickly as she breathes, then again and again. She inserts the second clip, then again and again.
Yelping, harrowing squeals, whimpers, and wheezes. One of the wolves attempts to run away and hide in the woods but she doesn’t allow it. One lies with a broken spine, jerking its paws, and she fires point-blank, finishing it off. She�
�s shot all the cartridges, every last one. A half-dozen wolf carcasses lie around the spruce, on snow that glistens black with blood; there’s a smell of gunpowder, burned flesh, and singed fur; gashed intestines steam. It’s quiet. Zuleikha walks over the bodies, toward the crooked spruce.
“Yuzuf! Ulym!” she rasps.
From the treetop, a small body with the inanimate face of a doll, frosty brows and lashes, and eyes squeezed tightly shut falls straight into her outstretched arms.
Yuzuf lies delirious for four days. Zuleikha kneels beside his bed the whole time, holding his burning hand. She sleeps right there, her head resting against his shoulder.
Leibe attempts to move her to the next bed but she won’t allow it. He gives up and just draws a curtain dividing Yuzuf’s spot from the rest of the ward. Leibe has decided to put them here in the infirmary rather than at home, so he can always keep an eye on them.
Achkenazi himself brings food. He watches Zuleikha kneeling motionless by her son’s bed, carefully places a dish on the windowsill, and removes the previous one, the food untouched.
Izabella stops by and firmly strokes Zuleikha’s back for a long time but Zuleikha doesn’t notice. Konstantin Arnoldovich comes a couple of times and attempts to draw Zuleikha into conversation. He tells her something about melon seeds they’ve sent him from the mainland after all, about agricultural helpers who will arrive any day, about the oxen and cows promised for the spring, for plowing (“I’ll learn how to plow – just imagine me behind a plow, Zuleikha!”) but no conversations come about.
Ikonnikov comes only once. He finds a place to kneel next to her and extends a shaking hand smudged with paints toward Yuzuf’s shoulder. Zuleikha pushes his hand away and throws herself on her son, covering him with her body. “I won’t give him up!” she snarls. “I won’t give him up to anyone!” Leibe leads Ikonnikov away and doesn’t allow him back in the infirmary.
Ignatov comes every day. Zuleikha doesn’t notice him. It’s as if she doesn’t see him, and when he begins speaking with her, it’s as if she doesn’t hear. He stands behind her for a long time then leaves. On the fourth day, Ignatov is there when Yuzuf’s little body begins cooling, releasing a generous, sticky sweat, and losing its crimson tinge. Ignatov sits down on the next bed, places his crutch beside him, lowers his face in his hands, and freezes, maybe dozing, maybe thinking. He sits for a long time.
“Leave, Ivan,” Zuleikha says, suddenly calm and not turning away from her son’s bed. “I’m not coming to see you anymore.”
“Then I’ll come here,” he says, lifting his head. “I’ve been punished. Don’t you see?” She strokes Yuzuf along his nearly closed eyelids and along cheekbones that have grown prominent.
“By whom?”
She walks up to Ignatov, shoves the crutch in his hands and pulls him up, raising him from the bed. He yields and stands. Zuleikha was small before, not reaching his shoulder, but now she’s absolutely tiny, as if she’s shrunk.
“Whoever it is, I’ve been punished.” Her weak arms push him toward the door. “And that’s all there is to it. That’s all.”
Ignatov bends, grips her shoulders, and shakes her, searching for her gaze. He finally finds it but Zuleikha’s eyes are frozen, as if they’re dead. He carefully releases her, takes his crutch, and slowly thuds toward the door.
She turns to her son after the thudding has faded outside. Yuzuf is sitting in bed. He’s pale, the skin is tight on his face, and his eyes are huge, set in purple circles.
“Mama,” he says in an even, quiet voice. “I had dreams, lots of dreams. Everything that Ilya Petrovich painted – Leningrad and Paris. What do you think, can I go there someday?”
Zuleikha leans her back against the wall and looks at her son without tearing her gaze away. He’s looking out the window, where large flakes of heavy snow are falling hard, without stopping.
PART FOUR
RETURN
THE WAR
The war comes to Semruk like a reverberation of a distant echo. It doesn’t seem to exist, though people say it does. They unexpectedly begin to receive a regular newspaper delivery – once a month, in one big, thick packet – bursting with headlines: “We’ll Close Ranks …” “We’ll Rout …” “We’ll Defeat …” The newspapers themselves gradually get thinner, but the war makes them grow meaner, fiercer, and more reckless. They’re now hung on the agitational board, where Semruk residents often stand in the evenings, reading with their heads together. Then they turn toward the Angara, watch seagulls circling in the clear sky, and quietly exchange remarks. It’s strange to think that somewhere far away there are enemy planes cutting through the firmament instead of birds.
Kuznets, who was recently promoted to the position of lieutenant of state security, organizes rallies during his rare visits. He tells of fronts where the Red Army battles valorously and of the successes it has achieved; people listen, keeping quiet. It’s hard to believe what he says, though it’s also impossible not to believe it.
Not one person left Semruk during the first months of the war. In the labor settlements, the commandants’ headquarters maintain registries of reserve corps for the rear guard who’ve reached draft age, but the lists have no practical use. Inmates aren’t allowed near weapons, which means they’re not allowed near army service, either, where the danger of their unifying in organized groups grows exponentially. The question of drafting them isn’t even posed in 1941 since it’s obvious that after reaching the front, enemies of the people would immediately desert to the fascists’ side and begin fighting against their motherland.
And so the war goes on, but it goes on far away, passing them by.
Then the war unexpectedly does what the government has so feared and hasn’t wanted: it opens, slightly, the heavy curtain separating Semruk from the world. During long years of fighting for survival on a tiny island-like patch in the depths of the taiga, deprived of ties to the “mainland,” and devoting their lives exclusively to fulfilling an economic plan, the exiles suddenly see themselves as part of a giant, heavily populated country. The names of distant cities – Minsk, Brest, Vilnius, Riga, Kiev, Vinnitsa, Lvov, Vitebsk, Kishinev, and Novgorod – sound from the low stage of the Semruk clubhouse, like a song floating from the pages of a geography textbook or a fairytale heard in distant childhood. It’s frightening because the enemy has captured all those cities. And there’s simultaneously a sweet ache from the thought that these cities exist at all. The very fact of those names being uttered by Kuznets’s broad, fleshy lips confirms that those cities have been there, growing, developing, planting greenery, modernizing, and living all this time. Kuznets’s lips used to just repeat, over and over, information about the plan, the five-year plan, indicators, quotas, the labor front … But now there’s Kerch, Alupka, Dzhankoi, Bakhchisarai, Yevpatoria, Odessa, Simferopol, Yalta …
“I’d almost forgotten there’s a place somewhere on earth called Bakhchisarai,” Konstantin Arnoldovich whispers, leaning toward Ikonnikov’s ear.
“I lived there two months and could sketch you the Fountain of Tears from memory. I was trying back then to capture the streamage of water along the marble,” says Ikonnikov.
“Streamage is an incorrect word, Ilya Petrovich. It doesn’t exist.”
“How can it not exist if I captured it?”
They learn about the blockade of Leningrad from Kuznets in October, after a month-long delay. They don’t even begin to discuss it with one another because there’s nothing to say.
In the spring of 1942, Kuznets makes a sudden appearance out of nowhere, as always. He’s brought with him a barge packed with emaciated people who have dark-olive skin and distinct profiles: Crimean Greeks and Tatars. “Ivan Sergeevich,” he says, “these outsiders are to be taken into your charge. And provide security measures. After all, they’re a socially dangerous element in large numbers and of excellent high quality.” He laughs.
Non-natives were being deported from southern territories in case the region should be o
verrun with occupiers and minority nations, giving such people the opportunity to desert to the enemy. This measure was, as they said, a precaution.
Well, Greeks are Greeks. Even if they’re Eskimos with papooses, they’re no strangers to Ignatov. Out of curiosity, he once counted up all the nationalities residing in Semruk and came to nineteen. This means there are two more now. They send these dark-skinned people to empty barracks to throw down their things. And then to the taiga. There’s still half a workday ahead, socially dangerous citizens. Ignatov entrusts the outsiders to Gorelov, who’s good at knocking sense into novices.
Kuznets and Ignatov retire to the commandant’s headquarters, as is their established habit. Ignatov isn’t drinking much of late but he’s with Kuznets, so how could he not sit a while and indulge the chief?
“You and I need to talk, Vanya,” says Kuznets, pouring strong-smelling alcohol into cloudy faceted glasses.
Ignatov wipes crumbs from the table with his palm, takes out what’s left of last night’s dinner – cucumbers, carrot, onion, all sorts of greens, and bread – then pulls the window curtains. Kuznets is talking in broad circles, though, and is in no hurry to get to the point, so first they drink to the future victory over fascism, then to comrade Stalin, to the valorous Red Army, and to the courageous home front (“A good home front, my dear man, is half the victory!”).
“So what was it you wanted to talk about, Zin?” says Ignatov, remembering what Kuznets said. His head is already growing heavy, as usual, filling with big, unwieldy thoughts, and his body is lightening, as if it will fly away any minute.
“Ah,” smiles Kuznets, placing a powerful brown hand on the nape of Ignatov’s neck and pulling him toward himself. “You haven’t forgotten.”
Their foreheads meet over the table and their front locks of hair touch.
“I look at you, Vanya,” says Kuznets, directing a dulled brownish eye at Ignatov, “and I just never tire of it.”
Zuleikha Page 42