“So, did you interrogate her?” asks the chief.
He’s short and sturdy. His hands are as big as shovels, though, as if he’d stolen them from someone else. Ignatov is silent; he wipes the ash from his hands.
“I see you interrogated her,” smiles the chief, glancing mockingly at Zuleikha’s streaked face.
He takes a white sheet of paper from the table and scrutinizes both blank sides.
“And wrote up a report,” he continues good-naturedly, crumpling the paper in his hands. “I told you, Ignatov, that interrogation is not a simple thing. An art, one might say. Experience is needed here. Mastery! Sure, he says, I know a thing or two about this!”
Either the paper happens to be very crisp or the chief’s hands are firm because the sheet crunches loudly and lushly in his hands, like fresh snow.
“How about this.” He rolls the paper into a firm little ball. “Leave her with me and I’ll have a talk with her. You do the paperwork transferring her over to us for investigation.”
Ignatov takes his officer’s cap from the edge of the table, puts it on, and slowly walks toward the door. Zuleikha’s gaze follows him, puzzled: What is this? Why?
The chief swings wide and hurls the paper pellet into a wire wastebasket by the door. He sits down at the desk and opens the top drawer. Without looking, he goes through the familiar motion of taking out a stack of paper, pens, and an ink well. Whistling something cheery, he clasps his hands together and stretches his long, strong fingers with a crack.
Ignatov stops at the door and looks at the ball of paper bouncing at the bottom of the wastebasket. He turns.
“She doesn’t know where they went,” he says.
“Is that what she whispered to you here under the table?” The chief shoots a glance at Ignatov across the room.
“She won’t help you, comrade. She has nothing to say.” Ignatov comes back into the room.
The chief leans back and the chair creaks long and strained, as if it’s about to collapse, and he scrutinizes Zuleikha and Ignatov closely, as if he’s seeing them for the first time. He continues stretching his fingers.
“Well, I never! You think that’s very clever! You’re offending me, Ignatov. Everybody talks to me. Even the mute.”
“I’m taking her back.”
“How about that!” The chief finally unclasps his hands and slaps them loudly on the table. “He lets an entire train car slip, comes to his senses half a day later, and I’m supposed to look into it? Find them in the taiga, catch them? They went in all directions long ago, to villages and small stations. And I’m supposed to run like hell, panting and sweating, and then file a report about why I didn’t catch them! Then he even takes away my first witness, too. That’s how it is, is it?”
“My job is to transport people. Yours is to catch them.”
“So why are you transporting them so badly, Ignatov? You killed half of them along the way. You closed your eyes to an organized escape. And now you don’t want to help the investigation and are taking away an abettor. You think you’ll come out of this with clean hands?”
“I’ll answer for my mistakes myself if they ask. Just not to you.”
Ignatov nods to Zuleikha: Let’s go! She shifts her gaze to the reddened chief.
“They’ll ask, Ignatov, they’ll ask!” he’s already shouting. “And very soon! I won’t even begin to cover for you. I’ll tell them how you were protecting a kulak broad!”
Ignatov adjusts his peaked cap, turns on his heels, and goes out of the room. Zuleikha takes frightened little steps behind him. She casts a final glance into the room as she’s leaving. The huge red slug is crawling imperturbably along the wall and the wise, mustached man is smiling tenderly after them.
Ignatov strides quickly along the tracks, holding a dim lantern with a candle in his extended hand. The small Tatar woman from car eight is running behind him, stepping lightly, almost silently. A guard is last, clattering along the ties.
Ignatov is well aware that they’ll make him answer for this. What had they said to him that morning in the office? “We’ll figure it out upon your return.” It’s clear they want him to finish his job first so they can tear him apart later. Well, go ahead, figure it out. But he won’t hold back. He’ll tell them everything, how they starve people along the way and how people reel, wandering and lost, at small stations. They’ve been underway three months and have barely crawled across the Urals. That’s simply unheard of. They would have gotten there faster on foot. Attrition during that time was about fifty heads. It’s too bad, even though they’re kulaks: they’re manpower after all – they could do honest work felling trees or building something. A whole lot more use than rotting away along the railroad tracks. And another fifty people today, whoosh…
No, he’ll answer for the escape – that was his fault, he’s not denying it. Didn’t keep his eyes peeled. Even the minder in that railroad car, someone so hardened (“Do not worry, citizen chief, the people in this car are a quiet, dense-headed lot and rotten intelligentsia – what would happen to them?”), had been duped. Even so, if you reasoned things out, if they’d been brought to their destination earlier, there wouldn’t have been any escape at all. Don’t think for a second I’m absolving myself of any guilt, he imagines telling them, but I do ask that you consider the reasons for what occurred. During three months of traveling, anyone at all will have nasty thoughts and time will be found to realize those thoughts. So there it is, brothers.
And if they ask why he removed a witness from the investigation? That small woman with the vibrant name, Zuleikha? What can I say? Something like a tin can is in Ignatov’s path and it’s satisfying to take a run-up and kick it. The can flies ahead, clinking and echoing along the rails.
They’re already in the holding yard. It’s not easy to find their train in the dark among so many other trains and rectangular carcasses of freight cars, the long reddish boxes of the cattle cars from which there’s sometimes either quiet talking or singing. Ignatov keeps raising his dim lantern, reading the numbers on the cars. Three long, dancing shadows keep growing, soaring up the sides of the train cars and then falling to the ground, spreading along the rails.
Behind him the frightened guard shouts, “Hey, what’re you doing?” Ignatov turns around. The small Tatar woman is standing sideways holding her belly, her body twisted, her head tilted back. And then she begins slowly sinking to the ground. The guard pokes his rifle uselessly in her direction: “Stop! Stop, I’m telling you!” She falls, collapsing as effortlessly and neatly as if she’s folded herself in half.
Ignatov crouches beside her. Her hands are ice-cold. Her eyes are closed and the shadows from her lashes cover half her face. The guard is still standing, uselessly aiming his rifle at her.
“Put the rifle away, you oaf, and keep quiet,” says Ignatov.
The guard flings the weapon over his shoulder.
“Starvation or something?” he asks.
“Pick her up,” Ignatov orders the guard. “No matter what this is, there’s no use guarding her until she comes to.”
The guard attempts to lift her a little but he grasps her awkwardly and her head falls back on a tie with a thud. Ignatov curses – what a clod! – and picks her up himself.
“Toss her arm around my neck,” he orders.
They walk further. The guard is now running up ahead, lighting the way. Ignatov carries her small body. She’s so light! How is it possible…? Zuleikha comes to little by little, clasping him around the neck so he feels her cold fingers on his cheek.