“We’ll bury Murtaza properly, according to Soviet custom,” the chairman soothes her, lovingly stroking the rough, carefully whitened sides of the stove. “Despite everything, he was a good master of the house…”
A steel blade touches Zuleikha: Prokopenko has come up behind her and is lightly tapping her shoulder with his bayonet. She shakes her head: I’m not going. Strong hands suddenly scoop her up and lift her in the air. Zuleikha jerks her arms and legs like a fussy baby in an adult’s arms, her baggy pants flashing under her skirts, but Slavutsky holds her firmly, until it hurts.
“Don’t touch me!” Zuleikha screams out from under the ceiling. “It’s a sin!”
“Are you going on your own? Or do we have to carry you out?” Mansurka’s concerned voice asks from somewhere below.
“On my own.”
Slavutsky cautiously releases Zuleikha. Her feet land on the floor.
“Allah will punish you,” she tells Mansurka. “He’ll punish all of you.”
And she begins gathering her things.
“Dress warmly,” Mansurka advises her, tossing wood in the stove and stoking the fire with the poker, as if he owned it. “So as not to catch cold.”
Her things are soon tied in a bundle. Zuleikha winds a shawl snugly around her head and draws her sheepskin coat tightly closed. From a stove shelf she takes the remainder of a loaf of bread wrapped in a rag, and puts it in one pocket. In the other she places the poisoned sugar from the windowsill. A tiny dead carcass remains lying by the window; a little mouse had a treat during the night.
She’s ready for the journey.
She stops near the door and casts a glance at the ravaged house. Bare walls, uncovered windows, a couple of trampled embroidered towels on the dirty floor. Murtaza is lying on the sleeping bench, his pointy beard thrust toward the ceiling. He’s not looking at Zuleikha. My husband, forgive me. I am not leaving you of my own will.
There’s a loud sound of fabric ripping – Mansurka is tearing down the curtain dividing the men’s quarters from the women’s, then he brushes off his hands, satisfied. The smashed pots, gutted trunks, and remainders of kitchen goods brazenly reveal themselves to the gaze of anyone entering. So disgraceful.
Blushing from the unbearable shame, Zuleikha looks down and runs out to the hallway.
Dawn glows in the sky.
A huge pile of household goods towers in the middle of the yard: trunks, baskets, dishes, tools… Panting from exertion, Prokopenko drags a heavy, hollowed-out cradle from the storehouse.
“Comrade Ignatov! Have a look, should we take this?”
“You fool.”
“I thought it should be entered on the inventory…” says Prokopenko, offended, and then he hurls the cradle on the very top of the pile anyway since he’s made up his mind. “Sweet mother of mine, do they have a lot of stuff!”
“Even so, everything belongs to the kolkhoz now.” Mansurka picks up a basket that fell off the pile and neatly places it back.
“Uh-huh. Ours. The people’s.” Prokopenko smiles broadly and secretly stuffs a small linen kaplau in his pocket.
Zuleikha walks down the front steps and sits on the sledge, her back to the horse, out of habit. Sandugach, who stood too long during the night, tosses back her head.
“Zuleikhaaa!” A low, hoarse voice suddenly sounds from inside the house.
Everyone turns toward the door.
“The deceased has come to life,” Prokopenko whispers loudly in the silence and surreptitiously crosses himself, as he backs toward the storehouse.
“Zuleikhaaa!” carries again from the house.
Ignatov raises his revolver. The cradle tumbles from the pile and crashes to the ground, splitting into pieces with a crack. The door flings open with an extended scrape and the Vampire Hag stands in the opening. Her long nightgown flutters and her lips quiver angrily. Her round, white eye sockets dig into the guests; her walking stick is in one hand, her chamber pot in the other.
“Where the devil are you, you pathetic hen?”
“Damn it,” says Prokopenko, catching his breath. “I almost went gray.”
“Look, she’s alive, the old witch.” Mansurka wipes perspiration from his forehead with his hand.
“And who might that be?” Ignatov stuffs the revolver back in the holster.
“His mother.” Mansurka scrutinizes the old woman and whistles in admiration. “She’s at least a hundred.”
“How come she’s not on the list?”
“Who could have known that she’s still–”
“Zuleikhaaa! You’ll get it in the end, Murtaza will show you!” The Vampire Hag jerks her chin up furiously and shakes her walking stick. She hurls the contents of the chamber pot in front of her with a sweeping motion. The little cornflowers on the milky porcelain flash. The cloudy liquid flies like a precise gob of spit and a large dark spot creeps along Ignatov’s overcoat.
Slavutsky swings his rifle up but Ignatov flaps his arm: As you were! Mansurka hurriedly opens the gate and Ignatov, his expression souring, jumps on his horse and rides out of the yard.
“Should we take her?” Prokopenko shouts after Ignatov.
“All we need in the caravan of sledges is the living dead,” he says, already in the road.
“Why are you sitting there?” Prokopenko leaps onto his horse and looks impatiently at Zuleikha. “Let’s go!”
Puzzled, Zuleikha looks around, moves into the driver’s place, and takes the heavy reins in her hands. She turns to her mother-in-law.
“My Murtaza will have your hide!” the Vampire Hag croaks from the front steps, the wind fluttering the wispy strands of her white braids. “Zuleikhaaa!”
Sandugach sets off, the foal following. Zuleikha drives out of the yard.
Prokopenko rides out last. He raises his head and sees ice-covered yellow skulls on a section of the gate: a horse bares long, sparse teeth; a bull’s black eye sockets stare stubbornly; and a sheep bends his wavy horns as if they’re snakes.
“No, they’re heathens after all,” he decides and hurries after the others.
“My Murtaza will kill you! Kill you! Zuleikhaaa!” carries after them.
Mansurka-Burdock smirks. He closes the gate from the outside, gently patting the sturdy, solid sections with his hand (hmm, those latches will need to be stronger!) and hurries home to get some sleep. Fifteen households in just one night is no joke. He doesn’t yet know that two men are waiting to ambush him by his house. They’ll push him against the fence, breathe hotly in his face, and disappear, and he’ll remain a motionless little sack hanging on the boards, pierced by two crooked sickles, his dumbfounded glassy eyes agog at the morning sky.
Zuleikha’s sledge merges into a long caravan of others being dekulakized. Their procession flows along Yulbash’s main street, toward the edge of town. There are cavalry soldiers with rifles lining the road. Among them is the busty Nastasya, with the magnificent cheeks, the one Zuleikha saw in the forest that morning.
“So, comrade Ignatov,” she shouts teasingly, glancing at Zuleikha, “is it easier to dekulakize women or something?”
Ignatov pays no attention and nudges his horse forward at a trot.
The gate of her husband’s house is growing distant, shrinking, and dissolving into the darkness of the street. Zuleikha cranes her neck and looks, looks at it, unable to turn away.
“Zuleikhaaa!” carries from the gate.
In windows along both sides of the street are the ashen faces of neighbors, their eyes wide open.