It’s better when he doesn’t drink until the evening. On a sober morning, Ikonnikov isn’t as cheerful and talkative – he sighs, slouches, and mills around his homemade easel a lot, endlessly scuffing his brushes at the palette – but for all that, something appears in his eyes that Yuzuf is prepared to watch for hours. Once he even wanted to draw his teacher at work, but Ikonnikov wouldn’t allow it.
Yuzuf’s shoes thud on the floorboards when he bursts into the clubhouse. Oh, he should have knocked, since it’s early and Ilya Petrovich could still be sleeping. But Ikonnikov’s dressed in a white shirt, a buttoned-up jacket, dark gray in color (maybe from dirt, maybe from time), and polished shoes. He’s standing by the wall and pounding at a nail, hammering it evenly.
“Here, help,” he says without turning.
Yuzuf runs over and hands him a picture that’s on the floor. Ikonnikov hangs it on the pounded nail.
“Like so,” he says, examining the room with a fastidious gaze, and repeats, “Just right. Like so!”
The canvases that had previously decorated all four of the walls have been gathered on one. Montmartre and Nevsky Prospect, Prechistenka Street and Semruk’s Lenin Street, the beaches of Viareggio and the Yalta embankments, the Seine, the Yauza, the Angara, and even Pyatiletka, the best kolkhoz goat, are all clustered together, touching each other in places and covering an entire wall. The other three walls are empty; glistening nail heads gawk forlornly.
Yuzuf looks at Ilya Petrovich. Is he drunk? No, he’s completely sober.
Ikonnikov takes a fat bundle of homemade brushes from the windowsill – thin are squirrel, thicker are fox, the biggest are badger – winds them with string, and sets them back down with a thud.
“That’s for you. I don’t need them any longer.”
“Are they sending you away?”
“No.” Ikonnikov smiles; under his eyes, bulging bags like preserved apples gather in large and small folds. “I’m leaving on my own. Can you imagine? On my own!”
Yuzuf doesn’t believe it. A person can’t go away anywhere on his own, everybody knows that. Or can he?
“Where to?”
Ilya Petrovich takes a long cotton scarf that’s worn to translucence in places and winds it round his thin neck.
“Wherever it turns out.”
How can someone leave without knowing where they’re going? A cold thought suddenly comes, like a vivid spark:
“To the war?”
Ikonnikov doesn’t answer. He slaps at his pockets, takes out the key to the clubhouse, and places it in Yuzuf’s palm.
“I won’t need this anymore, either,” he says, taking Yuzuf by the shoulders and looking him in the eye. “I’m leaving the artel to you.”
“But I’m still just a kid.” Yuzuf swallows hard. “A minor.”
“The commandant’s not against it. He needs good sales figures. The artel’s a whole production entity! It would be too bad to lose it. So you manage things here, please.”
Ilya Petrovich walks along the walls, touching the glistening nail heads with his fingertip.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done, isn’t there?”
Yuzuf rushes to his teacher and embraces him, burying his face in the smell of paints, turpentine, dusty canvas, coarse tobacco, and yesterday’s alcohol.
“Why are you going?”
Ikonnikov pats Yuzuf’s back.
“I always dreamt of seeing distant countries. When I was a child I wanted to be a sailor and travel the world.” Ilya Petrovich’s eyes are slyly narrowed, gleaming right next to Yuzuf. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll write to you from Paris itself. Deal?”
Yuzuf hates when people talk to him as if he were little. He moves away, wipes his eyes, and keeps silent. Ikonnikov picks up a thin knapsack from the floor and slings it over his shoulder. They walk together to the shore.
Despite the early hour, a whole delegation has gathered to see Ikonnikov off. Izabella is there. She has wizened and thinned in recent years, and her facial features show more clearly through withered skin that seems as carefully curried and scraped as leather. Konstantin Arnoldovich is with her. He has changed little over the years, though his frame is wirier, his face darker, and his hair lighter. Doctor Leibe is there, away from the infirmary for a short while. The commandant is drifting around at a distance, leaning on his stick, and half-facing the rest.
The morning is gray and cold. The wind carries slate-colored clouds over the Angara and tears at the exiles’ clothing. “So are we going or not, citizens?” a chilly sailor drearily inquires yet again. He’s standing in water up to his knees, holding the bow of a small, peeling boat that’s rocking on the waves. His bare feet are bluish-gray from the cold and he’s wearing a quilted jacket with a dirty mesh singlet peering out from under it. A gloomy Gorelov is sitting in the boat, his red nose turned away from the shore and his ears deeply sunken into his shoulders; he’s embracing a bulging duffel bag. Aglaya, who’s been living with him for three years now, had tagged along to the shore to see him off (“I’m practically your wife, Vasya, don’t you see?”) but he chased her away, afraid she’d cry on him.
“I asked Gorelov to keep an eye on you.” Izabella winds the unending scarf a little more snugly on Ikonnikov’s neck and fondly tucks the ends into the grubby collar of his jacket.
“I’m afraid it’s up to me to look after him.” Ilya Petrovich is peppy, even cheerful. “He was so scared when he got his draft notice.”
“Not everybody’s a hero like you.” Izabella looks into his eyes and shakes her head in distress. “Do you yourself even understand why you are?”
Ikonnikov smiles in response and narrows his eyes like a child. Ikonnikov is nearly fifty. Unlike Gorelov, who’s been called up for army service in accordance with his age and eligibility (absence of violations and punishments during time spent at the settlement, labor success, loyalty to the administration, overall degree of re-education), Ilya Petrovich has called himself up to the front as a volunteer. His application was evaluated for a long time, then evaluated again, and finally, astonished at Ikonnikov’s action, the authorities agreed to take him.
“Well …” Konstantin Arnoldovich extends a very withered hand that’s entangled in gnarled, ropy veins. “Well …”
“Who are you going to argue with now?” Ilya Petrovich shakes Sumlinsky’s hand for a moment before suddenly withdrawing it and embracing him.
They slap each other on the back cautiously, as if they’re women afraid of causing pain, then quickly back away, averting their flustered faces.
“Take care of yourself,” says Leibe, taking Ikonnikov by the elbow.
“Enough of this parting!” says the commandant’s harsh, annoyed voice. “You’re done.”
Ilya Petrovich gives Yuzuf’s hair a strong, hurried ruffle and winks. He turns to Ignatov and nods at him. He walks with a hunched and shuffling gait to the boat and gets in awkwardly, nearly dropping his bag into the water. He sits down alongside Gorelov and raises his large hand, and when he waves to those seeing him off, it becomes obvious how much his arms stick out of his too-short sleeves. The scarf around his neck has unwound again and is beating in the wind.
“Mon Dieu,” says Izabella, pressing her long fingers to her chin. “Mon Dieu.”
The sailor pushes the boat into deeper water and jumps in. A couple of seconds later, the motor wheezes then roars, musters its voice, and finally lets out a harrowing wail. The little boat turns around and leaves, cutting through foam that pulses on the waves. Konstantin Arnoldovich and Izabella, along with Leibe, watch it go. Yuzuf runs along the shore and waves his arms. Ignatov walks away without looking back.
The triangle of the boat shrinks and dwindles. Something long and light-colored (the scarf?) breaks away from it and flies over the waves like a seagull, before falling into the Angara.
“The first two of us to leave for the mainland,” Konstantin Arnoldovich utters quietly, as an aside, as if he’s not addressing anyone.
/> “The first of many?” asks Leibe, also as an aside.
Izabella gathers her narrow mouth into tight folds, throws back her completely white hair, and silently leaves the shore.
YUZUF AND ZULEIKHA
On a clear May day in 1946, the nimble little dark blue launch that delivers the weekly mail and printed materials to Semruk is carrying three passengers. Nobody greets them at the shore so there’s nobody there to be surprised that one of them is a rather dandyish military man wearing a stiffly ironed uniform and lavishly sprayed with cologne. Vasily Gorelov, in the flesh.
He jumps decisively, even jauntily, out of the launch and strides broadly and rapidly along the wooden pier, which moans underneath his ferociously squeaky and shiny boots as if in pain. The smooth sides of the small pigskin suitcase in his hand keeps blazing a fiery orange, as though it’s absorbed all the sunlight into itself.
The two other passengers, apparently a grandfather and grandson, climb timidly out of the launch and walk slowly behind him, looking around, confused. They scrutinize the smooth under-sides of overturned boats glimmering in the sun, the broad flags of fishing nets lazily fluttering in the wind, the sturdy stairway that runs up steeply from the shore, and houses of various colors sprinkled on the high knoll.
“Comrade,” the unnerved grandfather calls to Gorelov, “we want to see the local healer. Know how to find him?”
Gorelov turns around, looks the old man over with a stern gaze, as a policeman looks over a prank-playing little boy, and mumbles, “They’ve let this place go, you know …” A juicy tutting comes through his clenched teeth and he walks ashore without answering the question. The old man sighs, takes his grandson by the hand, and trudges after Gorelov.
It’s Sunday so it’s noisy in the settlement and people are out and about. Fresh curtains breathe with the breeze in wide-open windows and small front-yard gardens are white with jasmine. A group of boisterous lads chase a ball and whack it into a detachment of strutting gray geese whose leader hisses, snakes its long neck along the ground, and flings itself forward. A couple of shaggy dogs quickly fly out from under a gate, barking deafeningly and scaring away the geese. There are smells of smoke, the bathhouse, freshly planed wood, milk, and bliny. A gramophone’s cooing somewhere, hoarsely but tenderly, about love that’s true, friendship everlasting, and dreams fulfilled.
The old man and the little boy occasionally stop to ask the way – from an old woman leaning out a window and beating pillows, and a guy with an athletic torso who’s carrying a couple of little kids on bare shoulders that glisten with sweat. They finally reach a large, unprepossessing structure that stands at a distance. It’s made up of three buildings of various colors that have been added onto one another: in the center is the oldest one, already dark from time; the one to the right is a little lighter in color and more spacious; and the one to the left is completely new, honey-yellow, and still smelling tartly of pine. “Infirmary,” announces an inscription above in green paint.
The grandfather meekly knocks and enters without waiting for an answer. It’s cool and quiet in this spacious building with scrubbed floors, where identical white pillowcases shine softly on empty beds, stern instruments flash metallically on a neatly tidied table, and the breeze rustles at a large ledger that’s lying next to the instruments, its browned pages covered in small handwriting.
“Anybody here?”
There’s nobody. The grandfather goes outside and slowly circles the building, his grandson following with small steps. And there’s the back yard with a tiny gate, a meager woodpile, a broad and utterly dried-out block of wood with a half-rusted axe driven into it, and a couple of faded rags flapping on the clothes lines.
“Good afternoon,” the old man says, carefully opening the door a little.
After detecting the sound of motion, he steps inside and peers into the darkness of the room. A small, aging woman is placing things on a large checked headscarf with a long fringe. She has a pale face covered in fine flourishes of wrinkles, tired eyes under steeply arched brows, and broad white streaks in her long, black braids.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” says the man. He pulls off his floppy cap and nods low, with dignity. “Does the famous healer live here?”
“He lived here” – Zuleikha is stacking linens and clothes together – “up until yesterday.”
“He met his maker?”
“They hired him in town, down in Maklakovo.” Her tiny, unexpectedly strong hands tie up the bundle. “Apparently there was nobody to run the regional hospital there.”
“Oh no, how ’bout that …” The grandfather shakes his beard in disappointment, places a hand on the boy’s head, and clasps him against himself. “It took a week to get here. My grandson needs treatment.”
“They promised to send someone new in the next few days. Stay, you can live here for now while you wait.”
The flow of callers for the famous healer has grown each year. Zuleikha has gotten used to patients’ relatives staying at the infirmary.
“It’s him we need to see. We’ll go to him. Listen, ma’am …” The grandfather lowers his voice. “The doctor himself, he’s not overly strict? What do you think, will he see us? Won’t chase us out? That’s the town, after all, a proper hospital.”
“He won’t chase you out.” Zuleikha gazes at him for a long time. “And if you want to run off, he won’t let you go until the treatment’s done.”
“I heard, I heard …” The old man immediately breaks into a smile. He sighs with joy and relief as he hurries to the door, pulling on his cap. “Are you his wife?”
“No,” she says, becoming pensive, her fingers tugging at the knots on the headscarf. “I just helped with housekeeping. And now I’m to move out, too.”
The grandfather nods understandingly and hurries out after hastily saying goodbye, pushing his grandson before him. They nearly run back through the settlement to rush for the mail boat, which hasn’t cast off yet. The drawling, caressing sounds of an accordion drift after them through a wide-open window, along with sweet words about the prime of youth, never-ending joy, and inseparable love.
The grandfather and his grandson reach Maklakovo two days later, find the regional hospital and, in it, a small, lively person with a silvery halo of hair around his smooth skull. Another two days later, he operates on the boy and keeps him in the hospital for a month, for observation.
When the treatment is coming to an end, the grandfather begins pressing the nurse about how best to show gratitude to the famous healer, with money or some sort of gift. “He won’t take money,” she announces authoritatively, “but that coffee, now there’s a safe bet. He’s always swilling it down.”
Shaking his head distrustfully in a local food shop, the old man exchanges all the yellow coins sewn into the hem of his shirt for a sack of strange, oily beans with a sharp smell. He brings it to the hospital, petrified that he’s bought the wrong thing. To the old man’s tremendous relief, however, the healer accepts the tribute and smiles gratefully, his nostrils reveling in the bitter aroma coming from the sack. Who doesn’t love good coffee?
Gorelov doesn’t hurry as he walks through Semruk, right down the middle of Tsentralnaya Street, in his gleaming boots. He carries his puffed-up chest with dignity, and a round yellow medal casts a reflection on his brownish uniform jacket. His right hand holds the little suitcase a short distance away from his body, as if he’s exhibiting it for the hens and chicks running past, while his left hand keeps touching his smoothly shaven temple, using a cautious circular motion to smooth the short hair under his dark blue service cap’s raspberry-colored band.
Curtains in the windows on Tsentralnaya are trembling as if they’re alive and surprised faces flash behind them. People come out of their houses and talk among themselves, their gazes following the new arrival. Acting as if he hasn’t noticed the stir his appearance has caused, Gorelov parades leisurely to the main square, where the political information board, once small, sprawls lengthwis
e. It now looks like a long fence.
He places the little suitcase neatly on the ground. He watches Zaseka’s thin, scoliotic back as he pastes up a fresh sheet of Soviet Siberia, which flutters in the breeze. The sheet settles over a poster that’s faded and brown from rain and snow, where there’s a black-browed major leading a buxom white-toothed peasant woman in a dance, straight toward the joyful inscription, “Their happiness was restored!”
“You’re putting it up crooked, you clod,” Gorelov lazily says through clenched teeth, turning his calm, maybe even slightly sleepy, face toward the Angara.
“It looks perfectly straight to me,” says Zaseka, not turning around as his thin fingers carefully smooth the newspaper’s upper edge and small drops of white paste come out from under it. “How about that?”
A rough hand grabs him by the nape of the neck and thrusts his face into the sheet, which smells sharply of typographical ink.
“Is that how you talk to a security officer, you scum?” Gorelov whispers softly in Zaseka’s ear.
Zaseka’s scared, hare-like eyes look to the side.
“Comrade Gorelov …” he wheezes in surprise.
“What kind of comrade am I to you, you louse? Well?”
“Citizen – Citizen Gorelov …”
The iron grip weakens on Zaseka’s neck and releases him.
“As I said, you’re putting it up crooked,” says Gorelov, painstakingly straightening the newspaper, which is now creased from Zaseka’s bony head. “Get outta here, you useless dolt.”
Gorelov brushes off his hands and watches Zaseka clumsily smear paste on his cheeks and bolt down the street, where curious people immediately surround him. Then Gorelov places one boot on the suitcase, leans an elbow into his raised knee and freezes, directing his gaze at the Angara stretching below.
A female figure moves away from the crowd. Aglaya slowly walks toward Gorelov, pressing the ends of her faded headscarf to her chin, and stops a few steps away, undecided about approaching closer.
“Vasya, is that you?”
Zuleikha Page 44