He looks at her helplessly, lost, then lowers his eyes and strides toward the bluff. He turns around at the edge; his mother is pressing her hands to her throat and has turned her face away. He exhales hard and descends the cliff down a winding trail of rustling stones between boulders, picking up his feet and flying. The sky withdraws as the Angara nears, opening in a broad, deep-blue embrace.
When he reaches the bushes at the river’s edge, Yuzuf stops, scans to find the thin figure at the top, and waves. His mother is standing motionless, like a stone pillar, like a tree, and her long braids are half-unplaited, beating in the wind. She hasn’t even looked at him.
He darts under green masses of plants by the water. He unties the boat, pushes it away with his foot, and the current catches him immediately, directing him forward. Yuzuf inserts the oars in the oarlocks and splashes icy water on his flushed face. He turns around, reaching his hand toward the distant cliff again, but still his mother isn’t moving; only the wind flutters the light cotton of her old dress.
Zuleikha can’t hold in the pain anymore so it spills out, flooding everything around her: the gleaming Angara water, the malachite shores and hills, the cliff top where she stands, and the firmament in a white froth of clouds. Seagull wings cut the air like blades and that hurts; the wind bends shaggy spruce tops and that hurts; Yuzuf’s oars rip open the river, carrying him beyond the horizon to the Yenisei and that hurts. Watching it hurts. Even breathing hurts. If she could close her eyes and not see anything, not feel, but…
And is it really Yuzuf there, in the middle of the Angara, in that tiny wooden shell? Zuleikha peers out, straining her sharp hunter’s vision. A boy is standing in the boat and desperately waving his arms at her – his dark hair is disheveled, his ears point in different directions, his tanned arms are thin and fragile, and his bare knees are covered in dark scratches; this is the seven-year-old Yuzuf leaving her, floating away, saying goodbye. She cries out, sharply raising her arms with her hands flung wide, “My son!” And she waves, waves with both hands, answering so strongly, broadly, and furiously that it’s as if she’s about to take flight. The boat recedes and shrinks, but her eyes see the boy all the better, clearer, and more distinctly. She waves until his pale face disappears beyond a huge hill. And much more after that. She waves for a long time.
Finally, she lowers her arms. She pulls hard, tightening the knot of her headscarf very firmly on her neck. She turns her back on the Angara and leaves the cliff.
Zuleikha will plod off, heeding neither the time nor the path, trying not to breathe, so she won’t increase the pain. At Round Clearing, she’ll notice a person – grayed, limping, with a stick – walking toward her. She and Ignatov will catch sight of one another and stop, he on one edge of the clearing, she on the other.
He will suddenly realize how much he’s aged. Eyes that have lost their sharp sight will not be able to discern the wrinkles on Zuleikha’s face or the gray in her hair. And she will sense that while the pain that fills the world hasn’t gone, it has allowed her to breathe.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I first heard about Zuleikha before the book was even published, thanks to Elkost International Literary Agency, who represent Guzel Yakhina. Yulia Dobrovolskaya and Alexander Klimin of Elkost thought I might be interested in the novel. Of course I was – I love reading contemporary fiction set during the Soviet era – and I ended up enjoying the novel so much that I was more than happy to translate excerpts and, later, agree to translate the entire book for Oneworld. Thank you to Yulia and Alexander for thinking of me.
Guzel Yakhina has been unfailingly helpful, extraordinarily patient, and very warm in answering my numerous questions about details of the novel, its language, and her preferences for the translation. It’s been a pleasure to meet with her and talk about the book, and I appreciate her flexibility when making suggestions and her trust in my work.
My colleague Liza Prudovskaya read through a draft of Zuleikha, checking for errors, answering hundreds of questions, and offering hundreds of additional suggestions. Liza’s help is always an important part of my translation process but her ideas felt particularly important with Zuleikha, given the difficulties of decisions for translating Tatar words, historical and political vocabulary, and Guzel’s beautiful descriptions of nature.
It’s been a pleasure to work on my fifth book for Juliet Mabey and her team at Oneworld. As always, Juliet’s edits and queries went a long, long way in transforming my manuscript into a consistent, logical, and readable English-language text and I’m especially thankful for her help on horse-related vocabulary, which always feels as mysterious to me in English as it does in Russian. I also thank Juliet (again!) for her strong interest in Russian contemporary fiction and willingness to bring books like Zuleikha to Anglophone readers. Assistant editor Alyson Coombes’s cheerful help with a myriad of small issues that nobody ever likes to think about – copyright matters, schedules, and miscellaneous administrative questions that inevitably pop up – is always a welcome antidote to deadlines and the difficult decisions that any translation entails. Focused queries and creative suggestions from copyeditor Helen Szirtes kept me busy for weeks, pushing and inspiring me to reconsider, rewrite, and sharpen chunks of many difficult passages. I can’t thank her enough for her many contributions to the text, as well as her sense of humor and dedication. I’m no versifier, so I’m very grateful for poet and translator George Szirtes’s quick, slick work on the songs in the novel. I also appreciate Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp’s help with vocabulary for prayers and holidays as well as proofreader Charlotte Norman’s fantastic eye for spotting inconsistencies and nonsensical phrasing. As always, I’m thankful to production head Paul Nash for his clear schedules and instructions.
Thank you to everyone involved in the translation process and thank you to Zuleikha’s readers. I hope you enjoy Guzel’s novel and Zuleikha’s story as much as I did.
About the Author and Translator
Guzel Yakhina is a Russian author and filmmaker of Tatar origins. She graduated from the Kazan State Pedagogical University and completed her PhD at the Moscow Filmmaking School. Zuleikha is her first novel. In addition to the Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Award, Zuleikha also won the Prose of the Year Prize, the Ticket to the Stars Award and was a finalist for the Russian Booker Prize.
Lisa C. Hayden’s translations from the Russian include Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus, which won the Read Russia Award in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. Her blog, Lizok’s Bookshelf, examines contemporary Russian fiction. She lives in Maine, USA.
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