One floorboard squeaks underfoot; it’s the far one, by the window. At one time, maybe a hundred years ago or maybe in her sleep, she and Murtaza had hidden food items from the Red Hordesmen under a board like this. Zuleikha steps on it again and the long, high-pitched squeak sounds like someone’s voice. She sits down, inserts her fingers in a crevice and pulls, smiling to herself as the wood gives, easily lifting a little. A black rectangle of darkness under the floorboard breathes of the cold, damp earth. She slips her hand in, gropes around, and pulls out a light little parcel wrapped in a rag. She unties the strings and folds back old fabric and pieces of birch bark. Inside are two sheets of paper that don’t look alike: one’s snow white, the other’s dirty yellow, and they’re stuck together because they’ve grown into one another, from lying here so long. Zuleikha unsticks and unfolds them. She can’t read the first message and doesn’t know what outlandish building is depicted on the second. She understands only that Yuzuf hid them and that it is his secret, something so huge he couldn’t share it with his mother, or that he was protecting her for a while from whatever they contained. She stares at beads of small letters with long tails that seem to twist in the wind and the tower’s thin skeleton, which vaguely reminds her of a minaret; the words and the drawing scream of something, of summoning somewhere.
She feels it shoving her in the chest: her son has decided to flee.
Zuleikha sits on the floor for a few more minutes, pressing the fist with the crumpled letters to her chest, then she stands and runs to the clubhouse. She doesn’t remember running; it seems like she’s flown in an instant, in one leap. She tears the door open. Yuzuf is inside, at an easel, as always.
“Mama, why are you barefoot?”
“You! You…” Gasping for breath, she hurls the balled-up letters at him as if they were cannonballs.
He bends, picks them up, slowly smoothes them on his chest, and puts them away in his pocket. He doesn’t look up and his face is hardened, white. Zuleikha understands this is how things really are, that her son has decided to flee. To leave her. Abandon her.
She shouts something, throws herself against the walls, and thrashes her arms around; canvas crackles under her fists, frames break, and something falls and rolls along the floor. She herself falls, too. She coils up, huddles, and twists like a snake, burrowing into herself, wailing at something inside her. Abandoned, abandoned… She understands she’s not wailing at herself but at Yuzuf, who’s attached to her from all sides. His body, his hands, and his distorted, wet face are around her. They’re lying on the floor in a ball, tightly interlocked.
“Where?” she whimpers into Yuzuf’s chest. “Where are you going? Alone, without documents… They’ll catch you…”
“They won’t catch me, Mama.”
“They’ll put you in jail…” She clings to him as if she were drowning.
“They won’t put me in jail.”
“What about me?”
Yuzuf keeps silent and embraces her so it hurts.
“I won’t survive.” Zuleikha tries to catch his gaze. “I’ll die without you, Yuzuf. I’ll die as soon as you take the first step.”
She feels his damp breath on her neck.
“I’ll die,” Zuleikha stubbornly repeats. “I’ll die, die, die!”
He mumbles, moves away from her, and detaches himself from her. He pushes away her grasping hands and scrambles out of her embrace.
“Yuzuf!” Zuleikha rushes after him.
Her outstretched fingers slide through the dark hair at the back of his head like a comb, down his neck, leaving red scratches, and catches at the collar of his shirt so that Yuzuf runs out of the clubhouse with it torn.
“You’re no son to me!” Zuleikha wails after him. “No son!”
Her eyes don’t see, her ears don’t hear.
Abandoned. Abandoned.
She stands and trudges away, reeling. The wind is in her face, carrying the mewling of seagulls and the sounds of the forest. Underfoot: soil, grass, rocks, and roots.
Abandoned. Abandoned.
The world is flowing, streaming, before her gaze. There are no forms or lines, only colors that float past. And then there’s a distinct figure, tall and dark, amidst the flow. A head proudly set on broad masculine shoulders, long arms almost to the knees, a dress beating in the wind. You’re here, too, you old witch.
Zuleikha wants to push her away. She raises her hand to do so but for some reason she falls on the Vampire Hag’s chest instead, embracing a powerful body that smells of either tree bark or fresh earth. She buries her face in something warm, solid, muscular, and alive, feeling strong hands on her spine, the back of her head, around her, everywhere. Tears rise in her throat, winding around her gullet like a rope, and Zuleikha cries long and sweet after burying herself in her mother-in-law’s bosom. The tears flow so generously and swiftly that it seems they’re not coming from her eyes but from somewhere at the bottom of her heart, urged on by its rapid and resilient beating. Minutes or maybe hours later, after purging herself of every tear she’s kept inside over the years, she calms and comes to her senses. Her breathing is still fast and her chest is still heaving convulsively, but a tired, long-awaited relief is already flowing through her body.
“Tell me, Mama,” she whispers, either to her mother-in-law’s bony shoulder or to the wrinkles at the base of her neck. She doesn’t force open her eyes or unclasp her arms; it’s as if she’s afraid to let go. “Those stories about you going out into the urman when you were young – I always wanted to ask, why did you do it?”
“That was a long time ago. I was a stupid girl… I was looking for death, for deliverance from unhappy love.” The old woman’s broad, firm bosom rises and falls in a long, powerful sigh. “I went into the urman but it wasn’t there, that death.”
Zuleikha backs away in surprise so she can look her mother-in-law in the eye. The old woman’s face is dark brown, with large, twisting wrinkles. And it’s not a face at alclass="underline" it’s tree bark. Zuleikha has a gnarled old larch in her embrace. The tree trunk is bumpy and immense, with streaks of silvery pitch, roots like knots, and long sprawling branches that look upward, piercing the sky’s blueness; the first gleams of spring foliage tremble on its branches with a light emerald radiance. Zuleikha wipes away pieces of bark and needles that have stuck to her cheeks and trudges back to the settlement from the taiga.
Ignatov has known for a long time that he’ll be discharged. Kuznets has cooled greatly toward him since the 1942 incident with the plot that never happened. He rarely comes by, sending his fine fellows for inspections instead. He and Ignatov have never again sat for a bit. Kuznets himself is flying high, at colonel altitudes. He thinks it unnecessary to hide his hostility, so Ignatov’s personal case file has already been enriched with two official reprimands. A third means inevitable dismissal from his position.
Ignatov, who’s now a senior lieutenant, recently turned forty-six. (The promotion wasn’t the result of valiant service, just a planned restructuring within the hierarchy of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, shifting the line of ranks.) He’s spent sixteen of those years in Semruk. He’s not old yet, but he’s already half-gray and limping. His face is sad and his disposition is gloomy. He’s lonely.
Gorelov’s excessively obnoxious appearance on the morning boat can mean only one thing: that Ignatov is being discharged. He couldn’t wait, the dog, and had rushed over before everybody else so he could delight in his own power and drink it down leisurely, savoring it. Ignatov’s discharge might even come today.