All the same, she’ll die in the settlement. Taiga, midges, work… she won’t make it, no. Her strength is waning, you can see it in her eyes. Ignatov has recently realized that he can tell from their eyes who still has strength and whose strength is running out. Sometimes he guesses when doing his rounds: this one will be a stiff soon, the eyes are completely cold and dead; this man will still live a while, this woman, too. He guesses right, by the way. Basically, he’s turned into a fortune teller. An awful thought, ugh. That’s what a long trip does to a person…
Zuleikha turns around and raises her exhausted eyes to Ignatov. It’s as if she’s looked into his soul. And those green eyes have already made their mark on his heart.
“Don’t you dare give birth on my watch,” he says sternly and walks toward the bow of the barge.
He’ll hand her over to Kuznets; let her give birth then.
And so they leave Zuleikha on deck. She sits there all day, leaning her back against the wall of the crew quarters and gazing at ridges of green hills floating past in an uneven stubble of pines and spruces. The forests are dense here, dark. And they’re not just any forests but the urman. The watchman brings Zuleikha’s bundle of things up from the hold and she covers up for the night with her winter sheepskin coat. It’s August but the nights are cool and nippy.
Carrying the baby is difficult. Zuleikha’s belly has become large and cumbersome, and her legs are unwieldy, like iron. The baby is growing into someone restless, sometimes spinning like a spindle, sometimes kicking with all its might, sometimes leaning its little paws into her belly. The child apparently resembles its elder sister, Shamsia, who was also a naughty girl and a fidget. Or maybe the baby’s just hungry. Zuleikha herself has lost a lot of weight over these past months, like during the time of the Great Famine in 1921. Even her fingers are thinner, weakened, and stretched with translucent skin. And so it follows that the baby can’t be getting enough food, either.
She often looks at her belly with the fabric of her smock tightly stretched over it and imagines the tiny girl inside wrinkling a nose the size of the nail on a pinkie and opening her little mouth. Then her breasts fill with milk, growing heavy, like male flesh before a romantic meeting; two dark, round spots the size of a tenke coin show through on the fabric. The baby’s only seven months old but the milk has already come in. This happened once before, when she was expecting Sabida.
Zuleikha attempts to forbid herself from thinking about her daughters but it doesn’t work. Shamsia-Firuza, Khalida-Sabida, the water splashes against the side. Shamsia! – a gull in the sky screeches heartrendingly. Firuza! – a second one answers. Khalida! Sabida! – the others join in.
She’s tired of fighting that. And tired of starving. And tired of always traveling somewhere. The imperious black-mustached Red Hordesman had kept Leibe, Izabella, Konstantin Arnoldovich, the hard-to-love yet familiar Ilya Petrovich Ikonnikov, and even the horrid Gorelov all back somewhere on the pier. It is doubtful Zuleikha will see them again. They have already been consigned to the past and turned into spectral recollections, like Murtaza or the Vampire Hag. She is so tired of losing people close to her. And living in fear of parting, in constant expectation of a quick death for the child, of her own death. She is tired of living in general.
Her only joy and comfort lies in her pocket. Zuleikha gratefully remembers the moment her death appeared to her in the railroad car, to the rhythmic clacking of wheels. It was lying on her palm, as a heavy lump of sugar with sharp edges, and it has been with her ever since, like a loyal friend or dedicated mother. In her roughest moments, Zuleikha would grope at the folds of her clothes for that cherished lump and feel relief. Apparently, this truly was her very own death, hers alone, sent from above through a supreme gesture. While all around her people were dying from illness or hunger, others losing their minds, their deaths didn’t touch her: they felt distant, passing her by. Those who had died on other trains and couldn’t be buried in time lay along the railroad and saw their fellow travelers off with frozen gazes. Others who’d heard about the daring escape carried out near Pyshma and wanted to repeat it had been caught and executed on the spot, by the train cars. But Zuleikha was still living. That meant this very death had been predestined for her; it’s small, sweet, and smells – subtly and appealingly – of something bitter. Maybe it’s too bad she didn’t eat the sugar back on the train; she could have brought her suffering to an end long ago. I’ll eat it as soon as things become completely unbearable, she’d decided. It would be better to do it, of course, before the child is born, so they can pass away together, never parting.
Zuleikha opens her eyes. All the objects around her seem to ripple and float in dawn’s light-pink mist. A sturdy, white-breasted gull is sitting on a railing, the glistening amber buttons of its unblinking eyes watching. Behind the gull, vague outlines of distant shores show through the cottony morning fog that’s formed. The motor is silent; the barge drifts noiselessly downstream with the current. Small waves splash tenderly against the side. And then there’s a familiar voice at the bow: “Go ahead!”
The gull spreads its wings, rustling almost soundlessly, and dissolves into the fog. Zuleikha looks out from behind the wall of the crew quarters. She sees Ignatov at the bow, bare to the waist. A sailor is splashing river water on him from a bucket. Ignatov laughs and shakes his wet head so spray flies everywhere. His hands rub his ears, his sharp ribs, and shoulders bulging with muscles. He has a nice smile after all. It’s white, like sugar. And there’s a deep scar on his back, under one shoulder blade.
They toil their way down the Yenisei for a day and don’t enter the Angara until the following morning. The day turns out hot and sweaty again as they chug upstream; they feel sleepy in the afternoon. Ignatov sits on a tightly coiled bundle of rope, leaning his back against the wooden covering of the crew quarters. Out from under the bill of the peaked cap that’s pulled down over his eyebrows, he can see the spines of hills tinged bluish-green and the stony cheeks of precipices. Thin ripples of sunlight burn hot on the water, like fiery fish scales.
Now, at last, there can’t be much longer. He’s already counting the minutes until he sees the distant red dot of a flag on a boat; until he hands people over to Kuznets, counting heads so they don’t torture themselves with lists (or have to look at their faces – why do that yet again?); until this is out of his hands so he can breathe freely and calmly for the first time in half a year. That’s it, Kuznets, you’re in charge now. May those bearded faces haunt your nights now. I’ve had enough. I’d like work that’s a little simpler and more understandable. If they’re enemies, then cut them right down, mercilessly; but look after them if they’re friends. For enemies to be looked after and fed and pitied and doctored… well, spare me. And then it will be home, home! Get enough sleep on the train and go straight to Bakiev from the train station to report, and then to Nastasya in the evening – to Nastasya, sweet, dear, and passionate. He wasn’t overly concerned that she might have found someone else during this half-year. That one would disappear, just like he’d shown up. Anyway, he, Ignatov, would figure things out quickly. He’d have to find time for Ilona, too, to stop by, since things hadn’t ended nicely.
The barefoot sailor is tinkering nearby, repairing a rotten gangway covered with black spots of mildew.
“You been on the Angara before?” he asks.