Tomorrow is Friday. Murtaza will not go to the mosque tomorrow.
Zuleikha looks around for the mullah. He’s continuing to pray, sitting facing the prayer niche.
“Officers on duty to their posts,” commands Ignatov. “Others to sleep.”
“And if someone doesn’t feel like sleeping, comrade Ignatov?” The full-bosomed woman who shamelessly bared her head in the house of worship has found herself an armload of straw and is standing, embracing it.
“Wake-up will be at dawn,” Ignatov responds curtly and Zuleikha is somehow pleased that the commander is so strict with the shameless woman.
Nastasya sighs loudly and tosses the armload of straw on the floor near Zuleikha.
The officers on duty arrange themselves on an overturned bookcase by the entrance, their rifles gleaming brightly in the half-darkness. “Rise at dawn, awake till dawn, a sailor’s guard is never down!” The chairman salutes them in parting, wishing the sheep and travelers a good night. Ignatov gives a sign and the kerosene lamp’s little orange flame shrinks so only the very end of the wick smolders, barely noticeable in the dark.
Zuleikha gropes in her pocket for bread, breaks off a piece, and chews.
“Where are you taking us, commissar?” the mullah’s deep-toned, singsong voice rings out in the dark.
“Where the Party’s sending you, that’s where I’m taking you,” Ignatov responds just as loudly.
“So where is your Party sending us?”
“Ask the all-knowing Allah, let him whisper it in your ear.”
“Not everyone will last the journey. You’re taking us to our death, commissar.”
“Well then, you must try to survive. Or ask Allah for a quick death, so you don’t suffer.”
The anxious deportees whisper among themselves:
“Where? Where?”
“It couldn’t be Siberia?”
“But where else would it be? Exile is always there.”
“Is that far?”
“The mullah said we might not last the journey.”
“Allah! If only we can make it!”
“Yes. If we make it, we might survive–”
Rifles clank, reverberating, as the officers on duty load them before bed. Murmuring voices go quiet. The stove’s warmth creeps through the mosque; eyelids fill with sleepiness and shut. As Zuleikha is drifting off, she sees that the mullah’s wife has let her beloved gray cat out of the cage and is feeding it from her hand, shedding large tears on its soft, striped back. “Zuleikhaaa!” The Vampire Hag’s voice can be heard from far away, as if it’s coming from underground. “Zuleikhaaa!”
I’m hurrying, Mama, I’m hurrying…
Zuleikha opens her eyes. The exiles are sleeping all around her, in a thick duskiness weakly diluted by the flickering kerosene light. The fire crackles in the stove; the sheep in their nook bleat briefly, sleepily, from time to time. The officers on duty are dozing sweetly, leaning against the wall, their heads hanging on their slumping shoulders.
Ugh, it was only a dream.
And then there’s a sudden loud rustling, very close by. Intermittent whispering – male or female? – heated, quick, muddled, and mixed with loud rapid breaths. The darkness is quivering, turbulent, and breathing in the same place the shameless woman settled in on the armload of straw. It’s moving, at first slowly, then faster, sharper, and more energetically. This is no longer darkness: it’s two bodies, swathed in shadow. Something is shuddering, wheezing, and exhaling, deeply and for a long time. And then a muffled female laugh. “Hold on, you madman, I’m completely exhausted.” The voice is familiar – it’s her, the harlot with the magnificent cheeks. Zuleikha thinks she sees yellow hair scattering in the darkness like a heavy sheaf. The woman is breathing with her mouth wide open, with relief, and loudly, as if she’s not afraid of being heard. She bends her head on someone’s chest and they both go still and quiet.
Zuleikha strains to see, attempting to view the man’s face. And she discerns two eyes gazing out of the darkness: he’s been looking at her long and hard. It’s Ignatov.
“Salakhatdin!” A heartrending shriek suddenly rings out in the depths of the mosque. “My husband!”
The kerosene lamp flares abruptly. People leap up and look around, a half-awake child cries, and the cat mews under someone’s inadvertent boot.
“Salakhatdin!” the mullah’s wife keeps shouting.
Cursing, Ignatov frees himself from the net of Nastasya’s mermaid-like hair, hastily fastens his belt, and pulls on his boots as he walks. He runs to where the exiles are already densely bunched.
People let him through. The mullah is lying on the floor with his gray head directed toward the prayer niche and his long legs stretched out from under his curly fur coat. His enormous wife is kneeling alongside him and sobbing, her forehead on the floor. The mullah’s open eyes are frozen and looking upward; his skin is stretched over his cheekbones and the wrinkles running from his nose to his chin have formed his lips into a pale, dry smile. Ignatov looks up. There’s a fluid blue light in the narrow windows. Morning.
“Everybody get ready,” he says to the frozen faces around him. “We’re leaving.”
And he walks toward the door.
Nastasya’s gaze follows him. She’s sitting on the armload of straw and plaiting her loose hair into a thick wheaten braid.
They get ready quickly. It is decided to leave the mullah’s body in the canton for burial. At Ignatov’s insistence, the mullah’s wife, puffy with tears, tosses the fur coat on herself. Children help catch the cat, which has hidden behind the stove from fear, and put it back in its cage.
Outside, Zuleikha is already sitting in her driver’s place, holding the reins at the ready – they’re waiting for a command to leave – when Prokopenko looks around, runs over, and quickly throws something heavy, white, and shaggy onto the sledge. A lamb. He covers it with burlap and presses a crooked finger to his lips: Shh…
“Let’s go!” rings out loudly over the whole yard. The horses snort, the escorts shout to one another, and the sledges pull out of the yard like a school of large, slow fish.
Chairman Denisov stands by the gate, smiling and seeing them off.
“Well,” Ignatov says to him amiably, firmly shaking a hand as hard as the sole of a shoe, “stand firm, brother!”
“Listen, Ignatov,” says the flustered Denisov, lowering his voice and furrowing his brows a little. “What would you think about raising the red flag over the mosque?”
Ignatov scrutinizes the minaret’s tall tower. Its sharp top is nestled into the sky, with a dark tin squiggle of a crescent on it.
“It would be visible from far away,” he replies approvingly. “Beautiful!”
“All the same, it’s a cult building. It could look like some sort of… mishmash.”
“There’s a mishmash inside your head,” says Ignatov, slapping his impatient prancing horse on the neck. “This is a genuine shed for the kolkhoz. Understand that, shock worker?”
Denisov smiles and waves his hand – how could he not understand!
Ignatov lets the last sledge go ahead of him, casts a glance over the emptied yard and gallops after the caravan, spraying crisp morning snow out from under his horse’s hooves.
When the village is far behind them, Zuleikha turns around. A red flag is already waving like a small, hot flame over the slender candle of the mosque.