Usually it’s children who sleep on trunks; grown women are entitled to the small part of the sleeping bench that’s separated from the men’s quarters by a drape. But the fifteen-year-old Zuleikha was so short when she came into Murtaza’s home that the Vampire Hag said on the very first day, boring into her daughter-in-law with eyes that were then still bright, yellow-tinged hazel, “This shorty won’t even fall off a trunk.” And so they settled Zuleikha on a large, old pressed-tin trunk covered with shiny protruding nails. She hadn’t grown since then, so there’d been no need to resettle her elsewhere. And Murtaza occupied the whole sleeping bench.
Zuleikha spreads her mattress and blanket on the trunk, pulls her smock over her head, and begins unplaiting her braids. Her fingers aren’t minding her and her head falls to her chest. She hears the door slam through her drowsiness; Murtaza’s coming back.
“You here, woman?” he asks from the men’s quarters. “Light the stove in the bathhouse. Mama wants to bathe.”
Zuleikha buries her face in her hands. The bathhouse takes a long time. And bathing the Vampire Hag… Where will she find the strength? If only there were a couple more moments to sit just like this, without moving. Then the strength would come. And then she would stand. And light it.
“Got it into your head you’d sleep? You sleep in the wagon, sleep at home. Mama’s right, you’re a lazybones!”
Zuleikha leaps up.
Murtaza is standing in front of her trunk. He has in his hand a kerosene lamp with a flickering flame inside; his broad chin, with a deep dimple in the middle, is tense with anger. Her husband’s trembling shadow covers half the stove.
“I’m running, I’m running, Murtaza,” she says, her voice hoarse.
And she runs.
First clear a path to the bathhouse in the snow; she hadn’t cleared it in the morning because she didn’t know she’d have to light the stove. Then draw water from the well, twenty buckets of it because the Vampire Hag likes to splash around. Light the stove. Strew some nuts for the bichura behind the bench so it doesn’t play tricks, like putting out the stove, letting in fumes, or impeding the steaming. Wash the floors. Soak the bundles of birch leaves. Bring dried herbs from the attic – bur-marigold for washing female and male private places, mint for delicious steam – and brew them. Lay out a clean rug in the entrance. Bring clean underclothes for the Vampire Hag, Murtaza, and herself. Don’t forget pillows and a pitcher with cold drinking water.
Murtaza put the bathhouse in the corner of the yard, behind the storehouse and shed. He built the stove according to the latest methods, fussing for a long time with designs in a magazine brought from Kazan, soundlessly moving his lips and drawing a broad fingernail over the yellowed pages. He laid bricks for several days, constantly referring to the drawings. He ordered a steel tank, to its specifications, at the Kazan factory of the Prussian manufacturer, Diese, and installed it on the exact protruding ledge that was designated, then smoothly attached it with clay. A stove like this both heated the bathhouse and warmed water quickly, you just had to add the logs in a timely manner – it’s not just a stove, it’s a lovely sight. The mullah himself came to have a look and then ordered the exact same thing for his own home.
As Zuleikha deals with the tasks, her exhaustion burrows somewhere deep, conceals itself – maybe in the back of her head, maybe in her spine – and rolls itself into a ball. It will crawl out soon, cover her like a dense wave, knock her from her feet, and drown her. But that will be later. For now, the bathhouse has heated up and the Vampire Hag can be called to bathe.
Murtaza can enter his mother’s quarters without knocking, but Zuleikha is supposed to stamp her feet loudly on the floor in front of her door for a long time so the old woman will be ready for her arrival. If the Vampire Hag is awake, she feels the floorboards trembling and the harsh gaze of her blind eye sockets greets her daughter-in-law. If she’s sleeping, Zuleikha needs to leave immediately and come back later.
“Maybe she went to sleep,” Zuleikha hopes, diligently stamping by the entrance to her mother-in-law’s house. She pushes the door and sticks her head through the crack.
Three large kerosene lamps in decorative metal holders brightly illuminate the spacious room – the Vampire Hag always lights them before Murtaza’s evening arrival. The floors have been scraped with a thin blade and rubbed with river sand so they shine like honey (Zuleikha wore all the skin off her fingers shining it during the summer); snow-white lace on the windows is starched so crisply it could cut you; and hanging on the walls are smart, long, red and green embroidered towels and an oval mirror so huge that Zuleikha can see her full reflection in it, from head to toe. A tall grandfather clock gleams with amber varnish, its brass pendulum slowly and relentlessly ticking away the time. A yellow flame crackles in a tall stove covered with glazed tiles. Murtaza has stoked it himself; Zuleikha isn’t allowed to touch it. A cobweb-thin silk valance on the beams under the ceiling borders the room like an expensive frame.
The old woman sits enthroned in the corner of honor, the tur, drowning in heaps of plumped pillows on a mighty bed with an ornate cast-iron headboard. Her feet rest on the floor in soft milk-colored felt boots embroidered with colorful braiding. Her head – which is wrapped in a long white scarf all the way to her shaggy eyebrows – stands straight and steady on her droopy neck. Her narrow eye openings are set atop high, broad cheekbones and look triangular, thanks to eyelids that sag crookedly on each side.
“A person could die waiting for you to heat the bathhouse,” her mother-in-law calmly says.
Her mouth is sunken and wrinkled, like an old goose rump; she has almost no teeth but speaks distinctly and intelligibly.
As if you’ll die, thinks Zuleikha, creeping into the room. You’ll even be saying nasty things about me at my funeral.
“But don’t get your hopes up: I’m planning to live a long time,” the old woman continues. She sets aside her jasper prayer beads and gropes around for a walking stick darkened with age. “Murtaza and I will outlive you all. We have strong roots and grow from a good tree.”
“Now she’ll talk about my rotten root,” sighs Zuleikha, doomed, as she brings the old woman a fur cap, felt boots, and a long, robe-like dog-hair coat.
“Not like you, so thin-blooded.” The old woman extends a bony foot in front of her; Zuleikha carefully removes the soft, almost downy felt boot and puts on a tall, rigid felt boot. “You didn’t end up with either height or a face. Of course maybe there was honey smeared between your legs in your youth but then again that spot didn’t exactly flourish, now, did it? You only brought girls into the world and not one of them survived.”
Zuleikha pulls too hard at the second boot and the old woman cries out from pain.
“Easy there, little girl! I speak the truth and you know it yourself. Your family line is ending, wasting away, you thin-boned thing. And that’s how it should be: a rotten root should rot and a healthy one should live.”
The Vampire Hag leans on her walking stick, rises from the bed, and immediately stands an entire head taller than Zuleikha. She cranes her broad chin, which resembles a hoof, and directs the gaze of her white eyes at the ceiling: