Zuleikha tears a couple of sheets of pastila from the string, rolls them up tightly, and sticks them under her arm. She runs a hand over the rest. There’s still a lot, quite a lot, left. Murtaza shouldn’t figure anything out.
And now to go back.
She kneels and crawls toward the stairs. The rolled-up pastila prevents her from moving quickly. She truly is a pitiful hen now: she hadn’t even thought to bring any kind of bag with her. Zuleikha goes down the stairs slowly, walking on the edges of her curled-up feet because the soles are so numb she can’t feel them. When she reaches the last step, the door on the Vampire Hag’s side swings open noisily and a shadowy silhouette appears in the black opening. A heavy walking stick knocks at the floor.
“Anybody there?” the Vampire Hag’s deep, masculine voice asks the darkness.
Zuleikha goes still. Her heart pounds and her stomach shrinks into an icy ball. She wasn’t fast enough. The pastila is thawing, softening under her arm.
The Vampire Hag takes a step forward. In fifteen years of blindness, she has learned the house by heart, so she moves around here freely and confidently.
Zuleikha flies up a couple of stairs, her elbow squeezing the softened pastila to her body more firmly.
The old woman turns her chin in one direction then another. She doesn’t hear or see a thing but she senses something, the old witch. Yes, a Vampire Hag. Her walking stick knocks loudly, closer and closer. Oh, she’ll wake up Murtaza!
Zuleikha jumps a few steps higher, presses against the banister, and licks her chapped lips.
The white silhouette stops at the foot of the stairs. The old woman’s sniffing is audible as she noisily draws air through her nostrils. Zuleikha brings her palms to her face. Yes, they smell of goose and apples. The Vampire Hag makes a sudden, deft lunge forward and swings, beating at the stairs with her long walking stick, as if she’s hacking them in half with a sword. The end of the stick whistles somewhere very close and smashes into a board, half a toe’s length from the bare sole of Zuleikha’s foot. Feeling faint from fright, Zuleikha flops on the steps like dough. If the old witch strikes once more… The Vampire Hag mumbles something unintelligible and pulls the walking stick toward herself. The chamber pot clinks dully in the dark.
“Zuleikha!” The Vampire Hag’s shout blares toward her son’s quarters.
Mornings usually start like this in their home.
Zuleikha forces herself to swallow. Has she really escaped notice? Carefully placing her feet, Zuleikha creeps down the steps. She bides her time for a couple of moments.
“Zuleikhaaa!”
Now it’s time. Her mother-in-law doesn’t like to say it a third time. Zuleikha bounds over to the Vampire Hag, “Right here, right here, Mama!” and she takes from her hands a heavy pot covered with a warm, sticky moistness, just as she does every day.
“You turned up, you pitiful hen,” her mother-in-law grumbles. “All you know how to do is sleep, you lazybones.”
Murtaza has probably already woken up from the noise and may come out to the hallway. Zuleikha presses the rolled-up pastila more tightly under her arm (she can’t lose it outside!), gropes with her feet at someone’s felt boots on the floor, and races out. The storm beats at her chest and takes her in its solid fist, trying to knock her down. Zuleikha’s nightshirt rises like a bell. The front steps have turned into a snowdrift overnight and Zuleikha walks down, feeling carefully for the steps with her feet. She trudges to the outhouse, sinking in almost to her knees. She fights the wind to open the door. She hurls the contents of the chamber pot into the icy hole. When she comes back inside, the Vampire Hag has already gone to her part of the house.
Murtaza drowsily greets Zuleikha at the threshold with a kerosene lamp in his hand. His bushy eyebrows are knitted toward the bridge of his nose, and his cheeks, still creased from sleep, have wrinkles so deep they might have been carved with a knife.
“You lost your mind, woman? Out in a blizzard, undressed?”
“I just took Mama’s pot out and back.”
“You want to lie around sick half the winter again? So the whole household’s on me?”
“What do you mean, Murtaza? I didn’t get cold at all. Look!” Zuleikha holds out her bright-red palms, firmly pressing her elbows to her waist; the pastila bulges under her arm. Is it visible under her shirt? The fabric got wet in the snow and is clinging to her.
But Murtaza’s angry and isn’t even looking at her. He spits off to the side, stroking his shaved skull and combing his splayed fingers through his scruffy beard.
“Get us some food. And be ready to leave after you clear the yard. We’re going for firewood.”
Zuleikha gives a low nod and scurries behind the curtain.
She did it! She really did it – yes, she, Zuleikha, yes, she, the pitiful hen! And there they are, the spoils: two crumpled, twisted, clumped-up pieces of the most delicious pastila. Will she be able to deliver it today? And where should she hide these riches? The Vampire Hag roots around in their things when they’re out so she can’t leave it in the house. She’ll have to bring it with her. Of course that’s dangerous. But Allah seems to be on her side today, so she should be lucky.
Zuleikha tightly rolls the pastila into a long band and winds it around her waist. She lowers her nightshirt over it and puts on a smock and baggy wide pants. She braids her hair and throws on a scarf.
The dense gloom outside is thinning by the head of her bed, diluted by the overcast winter morning’s feeble light. Zuleikha pulls back the curtains – anything’s better than working in the dark. The kerosene lamp standing on the corner of the stove casts a little slanted light on the women’s quarters but the economizing Murtaza has turned the wick so low the flame is barely visible. Never mind; she could do all this blindfolded.
A new day is beginning.
By noon, the morning snowstorm has subsided and the sun is peering out of a sky that has turned bright blue. They set off for firewood.
Zuleikha is sitting at the rear of the sledge, her back to Murtaza, watching the houses of Yulbash grow distant. Green, yellow, deep blue, they’re looking out from under the snowbanks like brightly colored mushrooms. Tall white candles of smoke melt away in the celestial blueness. Snow crunches loudly and deliciously under the runners. Sandugach, perky in the frosty cold, occasionally snorts and shakes her mane. The old sheepskin under Zuleikha warms her. The precious band around her belly is warm and heats her, too. If only she can manage to deliver it today.
Her arms and back ache. A lot of snow piled up during the night and Zuleikha spent a long time sinking her shovel into the snowbanks to clear broad paths in the yard, from the front steps to the large storehouse, to the small storehouse, to the privy, to the winter shed, and to the back yard. After all that work, it’s nice to sit and do nothing on the rhythmically swaying sledge, to sit so comfortably, bundled up in a strong-smelling sheepskin coat, to stick her numbed hands into her sleeves, rest her chin on her chest, and close her eyes…
“Wake up, woman, we’re there.”
Gigantic trees surround the sledge. White pillows of snow on spruce boughs and sprawling heads of pine trees. Rime on birch branches as fine and long as a woman’s hair. Powerful walls of snowdrifts. Silence for many versts around.
Murtaza binds laced snowshoes to his felt boots, jumps down from the sledge, flings his rifle on his back, and tucks a large axe into his belt. He takes his poles in his hands and doesn’t look back as he confidently tramps a path into the thicket. Zuleikha is right behind him.