Denisov, the local chairman of the rural council, a stocky guy with the sturdy gait of an experienced sailor, welcomes them cordially, even warmly.
“We’ll arrange a hotel for you, highest class! The Astoria! Well, no, all right, we’ll do better, the Angleterre!” he promises, his smile generously baring large teeth.
Sheep are bleating deafeningly now, pushing, jumping on each other, shaking their floppy ears, and kicking their thin black legs. With his arms spread wide, Denisov drives them all into a pen behind a long cotton curtain that divides the enormous room into two halves. The last nimble little lamb is still racing around, drumming its little hooves sharply on the wooden floor. The chairman finally grabs it by its curly scruff and flings it in with the others; satisfied, he looks around, kicks smelly sheep pellets with his boot, and hospitably throws his arms open so the stripes of a sailor’s jersey flash in the gap at his collar:
“So, what was I telling you about this hotel?”
Ignatov cranes his neck and looks around. Bright light from a kerosene lamp illuminates a high wooden ceiling. Long narrow windows circle the round cupola. There are shallow waves of half-erased Arabic inscriptions on dark, pitch-covered walls. Inside cavernous niches gleam bright squares, the vestiges of recently removed tapestries with quotations from the Koran.
At first Ignatov doesn’t want to spend the night in a former mosque – blast it, this hotbed of obscurantism. But then he gets to thinking – actually, why not? Denisov’s a smart fellow. He’s got things figured out. Why let the building stand idle for no reason?
“There’s room for everyone,” the chairman continues boastfully, drawing the colorful curtain across. “Sheep in the women’s half, people in the men’s. It’s a relic, of course. But it’s convenient, that’s a fact! At first we wanted to take out the curtain but then decided to leave it. You can count on us having guests here each and every night.”
The mosque was recently transferred to the collective farm. Even the sharp smell of sheep manure can’t stifle its distinct aroma, maybe of old rugs, maybe of dusty books still remaining in the corners.
The shivering deportees are bunched by the entrance, scared and gawking at the curtain, behind which the sheep continue to bellow and push.
“Find a place to settle in, dekulakized citizens,” says Denisov as he opens the stove door and throws in a few logs. “In the beginning, my collective farm women were afraid of going into the men’s side, too,” he whispers conspiratorially to Ignatov. “A sin, they said. But then it was fine – they got used to it.”
The mullah in the karakul coat is the first to enter the mosque. He walks up to the high prayer niche and kneels. Several men follow him. As before, the women crowd at the threshold.
“Lady citizens,” the chairman shouts cheerfully from the stove, the fire’s golden sparkles gleaming in his dark pupils. “Those sheep, they’re not afraid. Follow their example.”
Raucous bleating carries from behind the curtain in response.
The mullah rises from his knees. He turns toward the exiles and signals welcomingly with his hands. People enter timidly, scattering along the walls.
Prokopenko, who’s crouched by a heap of junk in the corner, has unearthed a book and is picking at its pretty fabric cover decorated with metallic patterns – he’s drawn to learning.
“I ask you not to take the books,” says the chairman. “They’re awfully good for starting fires.”
“We won’t touch anything,” says Ignatov, looking sternly at Prokopenko, who tosses the book back on the pile, shrugging his shoulder indifferently. He doesn’t want it so terribly much anyway.
“Now listen, comrade representative,” Denisov says, turning to Ignatov. “Your little soldiers won’t be stealing a lamb for dinner, will they? I have a shortfall in the morning whenever there’s a dekulakized caravan. We’ve lost half the flock already, just in January! That’s a fact.”
“Collective farm goods? How could we!”
“Well, fine…” Denisov smiles and jokingly threatens Ignatov with a strong, gnarled finger covered in black calloused spots. “Because you can’t keep an eye on it all the time…”
Ignatov slaps Denisov on the shoulder to calm him: Simmer down, comrade! How about that: a former Petersburg sailor (Baltic fleet!) and Leningrad laborer (a shock worker!), he’s now one of the twenty-five thousand who’s followed the Party’s call to improve the Soviet countryside (a romantic!). In short, by all accounts Denisov’s one of us, Ignatov thinks, and yet he still regards his own pretty poorly.
Nastasya is walking through the mosque with a leisurely, lazy stride, scrutinizing the deportees huddled in the corners. She pulls her shaggy fur hat from her head and her heavy, wheaten braid cascades down her back toward her feet. The women gasp (in a mosque, in front of men, in front of a live mullah, with her head uncovered!) and press their hands to the children’s eyes. Nastasya approaches the heated stove and throws her sheepskin coat on it. The pleats on her uniform tunic are like tight musical strings that pull away from her high-set bosom under a wide belt that’s so tightly caught at her waist that it seems it will burst with a twang at any minute.
“We’ll put the children here,” says Ignatov, not looking at her. Am I showing pity again? he thinks meanly. Then he reassures himself – they’re still children even if they’re kulak children.
“Fine, I’ll freeze,” Nastasya cheerfully sighs and picks up her coat.
“Let me arrange some straw for you, you gorgeous thing.” Denisov winks at her.
Jostling, and with stifled shouts, the youngsters somehow settle around the wide stove, some on top of it, others beside it. The mothers lie down on the floor around it in a broad, solid ring. The rest seek out spots for themselves along the walls, on the rags lying in the corner, and on the debris of bookshelves and benches.
Zuleikha finds a half-burned scrap of rug and settles on it, leaning her back against the wall. The thoughts in her head are still as heavy and unwieldy as bread dough. Her eyes see but as if through a screen. Her ears hear but as if from afar. Her body moves and breathes but as if it’s not her own.
She’s been thinking all day about how the Vampire Hag’s prediction has come true. But in such a scary way! Three fiery angels – the three Red Hordesmen – had taken her away from her husband’s household in a carriage but the old woman stayed in the house with her adored son. What the Vampire Hag had been so joyful about and wanted so much had come about. Would Mansurka figure out to bury Murtaza alongside his daughters? And the Vampire Hag? Zuleikha had no doubt the old woman wouldn’t last long after her son’s death. All-powerful Allah, everything is at your will.
She’s sitting in a mosque for the first time in her life and in the main half at that – the men’s half – not far from the prayer niche. It’s obvious that the Almighty’s will is in this, too.
Husbands allowed women into the mosque reluctantly, only for big holidays, at Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Murtaza would steam himself thoroughly in the bathhouse every Friday and hurry off – ruddy, with his beard carefully combed – to Yulbash’s mosque for Friday prayers, after placing a green velvet embroidered skullcap on his head, which he’d shaved to a rosy sheen. The women’s part of the mosque, which was in the corner behind a thick curtain, was usually empty on Fridays. The mullah instructed the husbands to convey the content of the Friday conversations to their wives, who’d stayed to look after their households, so they’d become stronger in the true faith and not lose their bearings. Murtaza obediently fulfilled the instruction. After coming home and settling in on the sleeping bench, he would wait until the low rumbling of the flour mill or the clinking of dishes quieted in the women’s quarters, then he’d say his usual “I was at the mosque. I saw the mullah,” through the curtain. Zuleikha waited for Murtaza to say that every Friday because it meant far more than the individual words. It meant that everything in this world has its routine and the way of things is unshakable.