“Make it steam more and then get to my back,” the Vampire Hag commands calmly.
Glory be to Allah, the old woman likes to wash on the lower level. She sits in a huge wooden basin filled to the brim with water, carefully lowers the long, flat bags of breasts that hang to her bellybutton into the basin, and begins graciously extending her arms and legs one at a time to Zuleikha, who rubs them with a steamed bast scrubber, washing balls of grime to the floor.
Now it’s time for the hair. Her wispy gray braids, which fall down to her hips, need to be unplaited, lathered, and rinsed out without grazing the large, hanging crescent earrings or spilling water into unseeing eyes.
After rinsing in several pails of cold water, the Vampire Hag is ready. Zuleikha leads her out to the changing room and begins wiping her dry with towels, wondering if the old woman will reveal the mysterious dream to her. Zuleikha has no doubt she already told her son everything today.
But then the Vampire Hag extends a gnarled finger and pokes Zuleikha hard in the side. Zuleikha yelps and steps away. The old woman pokes again. And then a third time and a fourth. What’s wrong with her? Did she steam too long? Zuleikha jumps aside, toward the wall.
Her mother-in-law calms down a few moments later. She holds out a demanding hand in a habitual gesture, impatiently motioning with her fingers, into which Zuleikha places a pitcher of drinking water she readied in advance. The old woman takes greedy mouthfuls and the drops run down the deep folds at the corners of her mouth to her chin. Then she swings and forcefully hurls the pitcher into the wall. The pottery clangs loudly, smashing to pieces, and a dark water spot creeps down the logs.
Zuleikha’s lips move in a brief, soundless prayer. All-powerful Allah, what’s happened to the Vampire Hag today? She’s so worked up. Could she be going soft in the head due to her age? Zuleikha waits a bit. Then she cautiously approaches and continues dressing her mother-in-law.
“You’re silent,” the old woman utters in condemnation, allowing herself to be dressed in a clean undershirt and baggy wide pants. “You’re always silent, mute. If I had to live with someone who was silent all the time, I’d kill them.”
Zuleikha stops.
“You could never do anything like that,” she continues. “You can’t hit or kill or learn to love. Your fury’s sleeping deep inside and won’t ever wake up now, and what’s life without fury? No, you’ll never really live. In short, you’re a hen and your life is hennish.” The Vampire Hag leans back toward the wall with a blissful sigh. “My life, though, has been real. I’m already both blind and deaf but I’m still living, and I like that. But you’re not living. That’s why I don’t pity you.”
Zuleikha stands and listens, pressing the old woman’s felt boots to her chest.
“You’ll die soon: it was in my dream. Murtaza and I will stay in the house, but three fiery angels will fly here for you and bring you straight to Hell. I saw everything as it is: how they pick you up and how they hurl you into a carriage and how they carry you over the precipice. I’m standing on the front steps, watching. And you’re silent even then, just mooing like Kyubelek, your green eyes wide open, gawking at me like an insane woman. The angels roar with laughter, holding you firmly under the arms. Thwack of a whip and the earth opens wide, smoke and sparks coming up through the crack. Thwack and you’ve all flown off, disappearing into the smoke…”
Zuleikha’s legs are weakening and her hands release the felt boots. She leans against the wall, slowly sinking down onto a thin rug that gives little protection from the cold floor.
“Maybe that won’t come true soon,” says the Vampire Hag, yawning broadly and deliciously. “You know yourself that some dreams are fulfilled quickly, others months later so that I’m already starting to forget them…”
Zuleikha seems to have lost control over her hands, but she somehow dresses the old woman. The Vampire Hag notices her fumbling and smirks unkindly. Then she sits on the bench and leans resolutely into her walking stick.
“I’m not leaving the bathhouse with you today. Maybe you don’t have your wits about you after what you’ve heard. Who knows what will come into your head. And I still have a long time left to live. So call Murtaza; let him lead me home and put me to bed.”
After wrapping her sheepskin coat more firmly around her sweaty, bare body, Zuleikha trudges to the house and leads her husband back. He runs into the changing room without his hat, not shaking off the snow stuck to his felt boots.
“What happened, Eni?” He runs up to his mother and grasps her hands.
“I can’t…” The Vampire Hag’s weakened voice suddenly stirs and she drops her head to her son’s chest. “I can’t… no more…”
“What? What is it?” Murtaza drops to his knees and begins feeling her head, neck, and shoulders.
Her hands shaking, the old woman somehow unfastens the ties on the front of her smock and pulls at the collar opening. A crimson spot with large black grains of clotted blood is darkening on a light triangle of skin in the gap. A bruise stretches from the opening in her undershirt down toward her belly.
“Why…?” The Vampire Hag curves her mouth as if it were a sharply angled yoke for carrying pails and two large, glistening tears roll from her eyes before disappearing somewhere in the finely quivering wrinkles on her cheeks. She presses herself against her son, shaking soundlessly. “I didn’t do anything to her…”
This brings Murtaza to his feet.
“You!” He growls indistinctly, drilling his eyes into Zuleikha and groping at the wall next to him.
There are bunches of dried herbs and bundles of bast scrubbers under his hand – he pulls them off and flings them away. A heavy broom handle finally settles in his palm. He grasps it firmly and raises it threateningly.
“I didn’t beat her!” says Zuleikha in a stifled whisper, jumping away toward the window. “I never, not once, laid a finger on her! She asked me herself–”
“Murtaza, ulym, don’t beat her, have pity,” sounds the Vampire Hag’s trembling voice in the corner. “She didn’t pity me, but for her, please–”
Murtaza hurls the broom. The handle strikes Zuleikha on the shoulder, hurting; her sheepskin coat falls to the floor. She drops the felt boots herself and darts into the steam room. The door shuts behind her with a bang and the bolt clatters; her husband is locking her inside.
Pressing her hot face to the small steamed-up window, Zuleikha peers through a dancing shroud of snow as her husband and mother-in-law float to the house like two tall shadows. As the windows on the Vampire Hag’s side light up and then go dark. As Murtaza strides heavily back to the bathhouse.
Zuleikha grabs a large dipper and scoops water from the basin on the stove; fluffy puffs of steam rise from the basin.
The bolt clatters again and Murtaza is standing in the doorway in just his underclothes; he’s holding the same broom in his hand. He takes a step forward and closes the door behind him.
Hurl boiling water at him! Right now, don’t wait!
Zuleikha is breathing rapidly and holding the dipper in front of herself in outstretched hands as she steps away and presses her back to the wall; her shoulder blades sense a sharp bulge in the logs.
Murtaza takes another step and knocks the dipper from Zuleikha’s hands with the broom handle. He lurches toward her, throwing her to the lower steaming shelf. Zuleikha’s knees strike it hard and she sprawls on the shelf.
“Lie still, woman,” he says.