Up ahead, a clearing is already turning blue between spruce trees touched with rime. The birch trees part, tiny icicles jingling on their cottony branches, and they reveal a broad clearing adorned with a thick cover of snow. There’s the crooked linden tree with the long crevice-like hollow, too, alongside a chilly rowan bush. They’ve arrived.
There’s a small bird on a linden branch. Its dark blue breast is like a shard of sky and its eyes are like black beads. It looks closely at Zuleikha, chirruping and unafraid.
“Shamsia!” Zuleikha smiles and stretches a hand wearing a thick fur mitten toward the bird.
“Stop chattering, woman!” Murtaza flings a handful of snow and the bird darts away. “We came to work.”
Frightened, Zuleikha grabs a spade.
They begin shoveling away the deep snow under the linden tree and soon the outline of a small, dark mound begins to show through. Zuleikha tosses off her mittens and quickly clears it, smoothing with hands that redden in the icy air. Under the cold snow is the coldness of stone. Her fingernails scrape snowy crumbs out of the rounded Arabic script, her fingers melting the ice in the shallow dimples of the tashkil over the long wave of letters. Though unable to read, Zuleikha knows what’s carved here: “Shamsia, daughter of Murtaza Valiev.” And the date: “1917.”
While Murtaza is clearing their eldest daughter’s grave, Zuleikha takes a step to the side, drops to her knees, and gropes under the drifts for yet another gravestone, throwing the snow around with her elbows. Her numbed fingers find the stone themselves, slipping along the iced-up letters: “Firuza, daughter of Murtaza Valiev. 1920.”
The next gravestone: Sabida. 1924.
The next: Khalida. 1926.
“You shirking?” Murtaza has already cleared off the first grave and stands, leaning on the shaft of the spade, his eyes boring into Zuleikha. His irises are yellow and cold, and the whites of his eyes are dark, a clouded ruby color. The wrinkle in the middle of his forehead is moving as if it were alive.
“I’m saying hello to everyone,” says Zuleikha, looking down guiltily.
The four slightly tilting gray stones stand in a row, looking at her silently. They’re low, the height of a year-old child.
“It’d be better to help!” Murtaza grunts and plunges the spade into the frozen earth with all his might.
“Oh, but wait!” Zuleikha throws herself on Shamsia’s gravestone and presses her forearms to it.
Murtaza’s breathing is loud and displeased but he’s set the spade aside; he’s waiting.
“Forgive us, zirat iyase, spirit of the cemetery. We didn’t want to bother you before spring but we had to,” Zuleikha whispers at the rounded patterns of letters. “And forgive us, daughter. I know you aren’t angry. You yourself are glad to help your parents.”
Zuleikha rises from her knees and nods: Now we can continue. Murtaza gouges at the earth by the grave, attempting to place the spade in a frozen crevice that’s scarcely visible. Zuleikha digs at the ice with a stick. The crevice broadens gradually, growing and giving way, then finally opening up with an extended crack and uncovering a long wooden box, from which there wafts the smell of frozen earth. The sunny yellow grain makes a whooshing sound as Murtaza carefully pours it into the box, and Zuleikha places her hands under its heavy, flowing stream.
Grain.
It will sleep here over winter, between Shamsia and Firuza, in a deep wooden coffin. And when the air has begun to smell of spring and the meadows have already been warmed, it will lie down in the earth again, so it can sprout and develop as green shoots on tilled soil.
It was Murtaza who thought of digging out the secret place in the village cemetery. Zuleikha was initially frightened: isn’t it a sin to disturb the dead? Wouldn’t it be best to ask the mullah’s permission? And wouldn’t the spirit of the cemetery be angry? But she later agreed – let their daughters help with the chores. And their daughters helped meticulously. This was not the first year they had watched over their parents’ supplies until spring.
The box’s lid bangs shut. Murtaza strews snow on the disturbed grave. Then he winds the empty sacks around the spade handles, tosses them over his shoulder, and heads into the forest.
Zuleikha sprinkles more snow on the dug-up gravestones, as if she were covering them with a blanket at night. Goodbye, girls. We’ll see you in the spring if the Vampire Hag’s prediction doesn’t come true before then.
“Murtaza,” Zuleikha calls quietly to him. “If anything happens, put me here, with the girls. To Khalida’s right, that place is free. I don’t need a lot of space, you know that.”
Her husband doesn’t stop; his tall figure flashes between the birches. Zuleikha quietly murmurs something to the stones in parting and pulls her mittens on her stiff hands.
There’s chirping again on the linden branch: the nimble, blue-breasted little bird has returned to its place. Zuleikha waves joyfully to it – Shamsia, I knew that was you! – and dashes after her husband.
The sledge rides along the forest road, not hurrying. Sandugach snorts, urging the foal to keep up. The foal gallops joyfully beside her, sometimes sinking thin legs into snowdrifts on the roadside or poking a hook-nosed muzzle at his mother’s side. The foal has tagged along with them today. And rightly so: let him get used to trips to the forest.
The sun hasn’t yet reached midday but their work is already done. Glory be to Allah, nobody noticed them. A snowstorm will sweep away their tracks at the cemetery any day and it will be as if nothing happened.
As always, Zuleikha sits on the sledge facing away from Murtaza. The back of her head senses heavy, gloomy thoughts stirring in his mind. She had hoped her husband would calm down a little after hiding the grain and that the large wrinkle on his forehead, the one that looks as if it was hacked by an axe, would smooth. But no, the wrinkle hasn’t gone away; it’s even deeper now.
“I’m going into the forest tonight,” he says, speaking to something in front of him, addressing either the collar on Sandugach’s neck or the horse’s tail.
“What are you talking about?” Zuleikha turns and fixes her mournful gaze on her husband’s stern back. “It’s January…”
“There’ll be a lot of us. We won’t freeze.”
Murtaza has never gone into the forest. Other men had, in 1920 and 1924. They huddled in groups, hiding from the new authorities. They either slaughtered livestock or brought it with them. Their wives and children stayed at home to wait and hope their husbands would return. Sometimes they did, though more often they didn’t. The Red Horde shot some; others went missing.
“Don’t expect me before spring,” Murtaza goes on. “Look after my mother.”
Zuleikha is watching the rough, spongy sheepskin tightly stretched between her husband’s powerful shoulder blades.
“I’ll take the horse.” Murtaza makes a kissing noise and Sandugach obediently quickens her pace. “You can eat the foal.”
The young one hurries after his mother, amusingly throwing his legs forward, then backward, frolicking.
“She won’t survive,” Zuleikha says to Murtaza’s back. “Your mother won’t survive, I’m telling you.”