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 overrun 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.