“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.