“They were digging mushrooms out from under the snow,” says the soldier with the gold tooth, lifting Zuleikha’s skirt a little with his bayonet; the spades’ blades peer out from under sacks. “But they didn’t gather much!” He picks up one of the sacks with the point of his bayonet and shakes it in the air.
The brigade’s snickering swells into waves of laughter. A few large yellow grains fall from the sack to Zuleikha’s skirt and the laughter ends abruptly, as if it had been cut by a knife.
Looking down at her hem, Zuleikha takes off a mitten and hurriedly collects the grains in her fist. The cavalrymen circle the sledge, silently surrounding it. Murtaza slowly moves his hand toward the axe tucked in his sash.
Ignatov tosses his reins to a cavalryman who’s ridden over, and jumps to the ground. He walks up to Zuleikha, takes her fist in both hands, and forces it open. Up close, it’s obvious his eyes aren’t dark at all but bright gray, like river water. Beautiful eyes. And his fingers are dry and unexpectedly hot. And very strong. Zuleikha’s fist yields, unclenching. On her palm are long, smooth grains that gleam in the sun like honey. Quality wheat seed.
“Mushrooms, then,” Ignatov says softly. “So maybe, you kulak louse, you were out digging in the forest for some other reason?”
After sitting like a statue, Murtaza suddenly turns sharply toward the sledge and looks Ignatov in the eye with hatred. His stifled breathing gurgles in his gullet, and his chin shakes. Ignatov unfastens the holster on his belt, reaches for a black revolver with a long, hungry barrel, points it at Murtaza, and cocks it.
“I won’t give it up!” Murtaza wheezes. “I won’t give up anything this time!”
He swings the axe. Rifles click all at once. Ignatov presses the trigger. A shot blasts and the echo spreads through the forest. Sandugach neighs with fright. Magpies drop from the spruce trees and hurry off into a thicket, screeching loudly. Murtaza’s body collapses onto the sledge, his feet toward the horse, face down. The sledge shudders heavily.
The rifles stare at Zuleikha, the black barrels gleaming under the needles of their bayonets. A blue puff of smoke rises from the revolver. There’s a bitter smell of gunpowder.
Ignatov, stunned, is looking at the body prone on the sledge. He wipes his upper lip with the hand that’s holding the revolver and stows the weapon in his holster. He takes the axe that fell from its owner’s hand and swings, plunging it into the back of the sledge, just a finger’s length from Murtaza’s head. Then he leaps into his saddle, digs his heels into the horse, and speeds off down the road, full tilt, without looking back. Snow sprays out from under the horse’s hooves like dust.
“Comrade Ignatov,” the soldier with the gold tooth shouts after him. “What about the woman?”
Ignatov only waves: Leave her!
“So much for the mushroom picking, Green Eyes,” the soldier says, pushing out a broad lip in conclusion.
The cavalrymen hurry off behind their commander. The detachment flows around the sledge like waves around an island. Sheepskin coats with fleecy collars, shaggy fur hats, gray overcoats, and the red stripes on their trousers float past, speeding after the horseman in the pointy-topped cavalry hat. The clatter of hooves soon fades in the distance. Zuleikha is left by herself, in the middle of the forest’s stillness.
She sits motionless with her arms folded on her knees and her small fist squeezing the wheat grains. Murtaza’s powerful body is sprawled out on the sledge, freely stretching his arms and legs, head comfortably turned on its side, long beard spread out along the boards. He’s sleeping, just as he always does on his bench, taking up the entire space. There’s not even enough room for small Zuleikha to fit alongside him.
The wind plucks at the treetops. Pine trees creak somewhere in the forest. A couple of hours later, the foal is hungry and finds his mother’s teat with his lips and suckles milk. Sandugach inclines her head, contented.
An unhurried sun drifts along the horizon then slowly sinks into large snow clouds wafting in from the east. Evening is falling. Snow pelts down from the sky.
Without receiving her master’s usual shout and slap on the rump with the reins, Sandugach takes a timid step forward. Then a second and a third. The sledge begins to move, creaking loudly. The horse strides along the road to Yulbash, and the happy, sated foal skips alongside. The reins lie on the empty driver’s spot. Zuleikha is sitting on the sledge, her back to the horse, her unseeing gaze looking at the forest that remains behind.
On the road, where the sledge stood all day, is a deep-red spot about the size of a small round loaf of bread. Snow falls on the spot, quickly covering it.
Later, no matter how hard she tries, Zuleikha cannot remember how she got home. How she left the horse in the yard, still harnessed, and grasped Murtaza under the arms and dragged him inside the house. How heavy her husband’s huge, unwieldy body was, how loudly his heels knocked against the front steps.
She fluffed his pillow nice and high, just how he loves it, undressed him, and laid him on the sleeping bench. Lay down alongside him herself. They lay like that a long time, all night. The wood Murtaza had thrown in the stove that morning had burned down long ago and the logs of the cooling house crackled resonantly from the cold. The window that was broken yesterday had already burst and shattered with a flat, glassy jangle, and a mean wind mixed with prickly grains of snow whipped through the square window’s bare frame. And still they lay there, shoulder to shoulder, their wide-open eyes looking at the ceiling, which was first dark, then thickly flooded with white moonlight, then dark again. For the first time, Murtaza didn’t send her off to the women’s quarters. That was utterly surprising. A feeling of immense surprise would be the only thing from that night that remained in Zuleikha’s memory.
After the edge of the sky has turned alarmingly scarlet, foretelling a chilly dawn, there’s a knock at the gate. The knock is loud, angry, and insistent. A tired master of the house knocks meanly and relentlessly like that when returning home and discovering someone has locked his house from the inside.
Zuleikha hears the noise – it’s far away and indistinct, as if it’s coming through the feather mattress. But she doesn’t have the strength to stop staring at the ceiling. Let Murtaza get up and open it. It’s not a woman’s job to open doors at night.
The bolt on the gate clanks, letting in uninvited guests. The yard fills with voices and the neighing of horses. Several tall silhouettes float through a yard that’s still dark. The door in the entrance hall – the door into the house – bangs.
“Well, now, this is cold! Did everybody here die or something?”
“Get the stove going! We’ll freeze, damn it.”
The clatter of hobnail boots on frozen boards. Floorboards squeaking loudly, alarmingly. The clang of the stove damper. The scratch of a match and the sharp smell of sulfur. The crackle of a fire flaring in the stove.
“Where are the people who live here?”
“We’ll find them, don’t fret. Have a look around for now.”
The wick in the lamp flickers as it flares up: crooked black shadows dance along the walls and a soft, warm light is already beginning to fill the house. A broad-nosed face ruined by large pockmarks leans over Zuleikha. It’s Mansurka-Burdock, chairman of the rural council. He’s holding a kerosene lamp right next to his face, making the round pox scars seem as deep as if they’d been hollowed out by a spoon. He’s looking purposefully at Zuleikha. He shifts his gaze to Murtaza’s thinned face, scrutinizes the black clotted hole on his chest, perplexed, and whistles, at a loss.