A half-hour later, a vat of millet porridge is brought to the train for the deportees. This is completely unexpected and so serendipitous (people hadn’t been fed for two days now) that it couldn’t be a simple coincidence.
“So that’s how it is,” Polipyev reflects spitefully, observing from his compartment window as large yellow pieces of clumped porridge are tossed into buckets (one bucket per car) with a measuring ladle. “Our menacing beast of a commandant’s turned out to be just another run-of-the-mill briber.”
That thought fills the supply manager with a calm satisfaction that’s all the greater because he’s nevertheless managed to conceal a couple of pieces of wonderful lamb. Polipyev decides to add them to the monotonous barley the next day without the commandant’s knowledge. Ignatov has been eating poorly of late and is unlikely to identify the taste of meat in porridge that has already come to be hated.
On their last day standing near Sverdlovsk, there’s a small incident in the eighth carriage. The special train has been kept there for nearly a week. There’s a dark valley, marked in places by remnants of slushy snow but already touched with fresh green shoots, that’s visible through an opening in the door about the width of the palm of a hand. (On the move and during stops, the door is permitted to be opened a little, but when entering populated areas it is supposed to be locked with two bolts.) The green is intensifying with each passing day, growing brighter, and filling the horizon.
Fooled by the train’s prolonged standstill, a small red-breasted bird has decided to build its nest under the railroad car’s roof, not far from Zuleikha’s little window. Businesslike, it has fetched twigs and fluff, tirelessly stuffing them under the roof and chirping with excitement.
“If we stand here this long again, she’ll have a chance to lay her eggs,” Konstantin Arnoldovich says, without tearing himself away from his book.
“What eggs? We’ll scoff it down right now!” Gorelov swallows and makes his way closer to the window, wiggling his fingers in a predatory manner and mulling over how best to bag his prey.
“Let’s admire it a little longer,” says Ikonnikov, drawing his squinting eyes closer to the window.
A sudden crashing blow, and dust, sand, and sawdust shower down. The little bird cheeps with fright and darts into the sky. It’s Zuleikha who struck the railroad car’s ceiling with a long, sturdy board she pulled out of the iron clamps on the door. She gazes after the little bird, returns the board to its place, and brushes off her hands.
Gorelov falls on the bunks with a disappointed wail – “What the hell are you doing, you fool Tatar woman!” That’s it, lunch is gone. It flew away. Ikonnikov looks at Zuleikha with interest for what seems to be the first time during the journey.
“If she loses her nest, she won’t lay eggs,” she says curtly. “She’ll be looking for her lost nest all summer.”
She climbs back up on the bunk. She notices that a board on the ceiling has come detached from the blow and a narrow crevice has formed, revealing a streak of sky. And that’s very nice because she can’t look out the window all the time.
The train will begin moving in the evening. It will cross the Ural mountain range that night. Zuleikha will watch the stars twinkling through the crevice in the ceiling and think, So, Allah, is there still long to ride?
Where-where? the wheels will clatter. Where-where? Where-where? And they’ll answer themselves: There-there. There-there. There-there.
ESCAPE
“Sons of bitches! Everybody–” says a crazed, half-strangled voice from somewhere below.
Zuleikha is hanging out of the bunk, peering into the darkness. What’s down there? Through the loud, rhythmical noise of the wheels come sounds of struggle, stifled grunting, and fisticuffs, which are alternately muffled, as if striking something soft, and resonant, as if striking something hard. In a narrow, slanting slice of moonlight shining through the window there are several bodies swarming by the cast-iron stove.
“I’ll let you stinking bitches have it!” another stifled shout changes to grunting.
It sounds like their minder’s voice. And yes, there he is, Gorelov, lying on the floor, hands tied behind his back, mouth bound by a rag, and wriggling like a little worm. Above him a couple of strapping peasants are pummeling him ferociously and enjoying it. He jerks violently, bending like a yoke, and throws them both off, but then he hits his head on a corner of the stove and goes quiet.
The railroad car isn’t sleeping. The peasant men and women are matter-of-factly exchanging remarks and meaningful glances on the bunks, nodding that he had it coming. Some help tie the motionless minder more firmly, others bustle around, gathering their things.
The man who once had many children but is now a solitary peasant pulls the fat heavy board out of the iron clamps on the door. He approaches Zuleikha’s bunk, gets into position, and strikes the end of the board on the same spot she hit that morning, scaring away the red-breasted bird.
“What are you doing, brother?” says Zuleikha, scared.
Not responding, he hits the ceiling again and again. He strikes in time with the clacking of the wheels so it can’t be heard. The crevice widens overhead, gaping, and now there’s a broad starry tongue of sky visible through the hole, rather than a narrow strip. The peasant extends the board to Zuleikha – here, hold this! – and leaps up on the bunk. He kneels and thrusts his wiry shoulders into the ceiling, which is already yielding. Something cracks and creaks, and a fresh breeze bursts through the gap, hitting Zuleikha in the face. The peasant pulls himself up with his arms and disappears above.
“Garrrmmmph!” Gorelov has come to and writhes on the floor, his eyes boring into Zuleikha.
The peasant man’s face hangs over the star-strewn hole in the ceiling. He’s smiling for the first time in several months.
“Well?” he says to those crowded below. And he extends a long, bony arm.
One after the other, the exiles grasp that hand, leap on Zuleikha’s bunk, and push their way through the hole in the ceiling. Peasant men, women, and adolescents disappear above, quickly and nimbly. One fat woman gets stuck in the narrow opening, but the people below are in a hurry and those awaiting their turn press and push, and she somehow climbs through, tearing her dress and body, leaving threads and pieces of fabric on the sharp, rough wood.
Gorelov grunts and growls frightfully, his body beating against the iron stove.
“And you, sister?” The voice is just above her ear. The peasant is looking through the hole at Zuleikha, raising his brow in encouragement.
Escape? Leave the carriage where she’s already spent so many long weeks? And a bunk that’s heated from her warmth and smells of her body? Leave the sweet, good-natured professor and the kind Izabella? Disobey the strict Ignatov, the stern soldiers with rifles, and the angry station bosses? Disobey her own fate?
She shakes her head. No, I won’t go, may Allah protect me.
“But you’re strong, you can do it!” The peasant man extends an insistent hand.
Doubtful, she looks for a long time at the broad hand with dark, bumpy calluses. She finally lowers her head for no.
“Well, suit yourself.”
Muffled footsteps knock on the ceiling. Outside the little window they can see long shadows quickly falling from the roof, flying down below the railroad embankment, and floating into the forest in a black flock. And that’s that.