“No!” She’s striding quickly, almost running.
“Watch out you don’t regret it! You have a son! Remember him?”
She spins around and gives Gorelov a long, close look. Then turns abruptly and her narrow back soon dissolves between the trees.
A couple of days later, Gorelov is walking through the woods. He loves taking walks during the workday. Instructions have been handed out, the shift is sweating away at their labor, and cubic meter after cubic meter of pitch-scented lumber is toppling to the ground with a crash and being placed in stacks, so now he can step away and breathe more freely, especially since his head’s already ringing from the screeching saws.
He walks slowly through the autumn taiga, slashing with a small switch and knocking down ruby-red rosehips. It really was the right thing to appoint him for agent work. Kuznets has a good head on his shoulders and discerned Gorelov’s wasted talent immediately. Within a month of their memorable discussion in the bathhouse, Gorelov had not only got that smug dauber Ikonnikov scribbling short notes composed in fancy language, but the accountant from the office began scratching away at detailed essays for him in his neat schoolchild’s hand. There was also the little assistant cook at the dining hall, sweating from tension, who passed on brief phrases that Achkenazi said to him during lunch preparation; and various other people who hadn’t been taught reading and writing were dropping by Gorelov’s house in the evenings to whisper a little and talk about life. Everybody’s covered: loggers, office clerks, and even the dining hall and the clubhouse. The only failure is with the commandant.
Gorelov hacks the switch as hard as he can at the sharp top of an anthill. It roils with agitated ants. Of course nobody’s ordered him to look after Ignatov; that’s simply become an interest for him. Would it work out, though? Something has gnawed long and pleasantly in his belly at the thought that the woman who’d been lying under the commandant about an hour before, still warm with his heat and still smelling of his scent, would tell him – the mangy, hardened criminal Gorelov – what the commandant had been saying. This is why it’s all the sweeter to sleep with Aglaya. It makes Gorelov glow inside, nice and hot, to imagine Ignatov stroking her heavy curls shot with reddish gold, running a hand along her rounded back with the dark beauty mark on a shoulder blade, and burying his face in her soft white neck. All that is now his, Gorelov’s.
If Zuleikha tells the commandant about their recent conversation, Gorelov will see to it she pays. But he’s certain she’ll keep quiet out of fear for her son.
He flings the switch and sits under a gnarled pine tree. A slight breeze is barely breathing on his face. Saws squeak and workers’ shouts ring out somewhere in the distance. That’s good.
There’s a slight rustling close by. It’s a dark squirrel already dressed in fluffy gray for winter and it’s scratching along the ground, pricking up its sharp little ears. Gorelov slowly reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a cigarette butt he stashed away in the morning, presses it in his fingertips, and clicks his tongue: Here, have some. The animal approaches, extending its slim snout forward and twitching its shiny little nose. Carefully, so as not to frighten it, Gorelov hides his other hand behind his back and gropes among the pine roots for a hefty rock, grasping it comfortably in his fist.
The squirrel is already beside him, its hazel eyes glistening and its wrinkled little black fingers stretching toward the palm of Gorelov’s toughened hand. He presses the rock harder behind his back and holds his breath. Closer, sweetie, come on.
Then a shot booms and the squirrel is suddenly lying motionless on variegated brown tree needles with a dark red spot instead of an eye socket. For an instant, Gorelov thinks the shot grazed him. There’s nothing to breathe. He’s frantically inhaling, having difficulty swallowing, and his throat feels twisted, as if a vise were pressing it. As before, he senses the crumbly softness of the cigarette butt in one hand and the cold hardness of the stone in the other. Is he in one piece?
There’s a sound of lightly snapping branches at the edge of the clearing, then a small, thin figure slips out from behind rowan bushes that have already shed half their leaves, and comes closer. Gorelov feels a large, cold drop roll along the back of his head, down his neck, behind his shirt collar, and along his spine.
Zuleikha slings her rifle on her back as she comes right up to Gorelov. She crouches, with her knees spread apart like a man, picks up the lifeless lump, puts its little head in a loop of rope, and hangs it on her belt. She looks straight down on Gorelov from above, then turns around and goes into the forest.
After the light, nearly silent crunch of her footsteps has quieted in the thicket, Gorelov sticks the cigarette butt pressed between his fingertips into his mouth, fumbles in his pockets with a shaking hand, finds a match, and frantically strikes it on the sole of his boot. The match breaks, he flings it away, and spits out the cigarette butt.
She’s a viper. Who would have thought? She looks so quiet. He leans his back against a rough pine trunk, exhales deeply, and closes his eyes. Well, screw it. Forget the commandant. Who cares?
Snow comes late, toward the end of October, and changes autumn to winter in a day. The animals already have their winter coats and are dressed in splendid fur. The season has begun but for the first time Zuleikha isn’t glad of it. She doesn’t have the strength to tear herself away from Ignatov’s warm chest, slip out from under his heavy arm, and run off into the cold, dark blue morning. Leaving the commandant’s headquarters is like cutting ties that bind. Before, there had been some joy in her skis gliding rapidly over the snow, in the frosty wind hitting her face, and in fluffy pelts flashing in the crown of a pine tree. But now the short winter days drag on like years. She waits them out, overcoming them like an illness. She hurries back when the sun reddens slightly as if it’s sunset, the air thickens, and the shadows fill with violet. She goes to the infirmary but her eyes are already hurrying toward the hill, toward the high front steps where a small, hot flame flares, filled with impatience.
That night Ignatov says:
“Come live with me.”
She lifts her face from his body and finds his eyes in the darkness.
“Bring the little boy and come.”
She lays her head back without saying anything.
Snow is piling up early the next morning. The storm is blowing so hard and thick that it beats at the door, the windows are plastered in white, and the chimney howls like a pack of wolves. The lumbermen never go out into the taiga in blizzards like this; the hunters don’t go out, either.
Zuleikha touches Ignatov’s temple with a finger:
“At least, just this once, I can stay and look at you for longer.”
If she could, she would happily look at him all day.
“What’s to look at?” he says, covering her face with his own. “I’m afraid you’ll have to keep looking some other time…”
When she finally tears her head from the pillow, having fallen back into a deep slumber, the storm has died down and everything is absolutely still outside – no human voices, no knocking of axes, no dining-hall gong – as if the place were a ghost town. A dull yellow light’s trickling through the half-covered windows. Ignatov is still asleep, settled on his back. She straightens a blanket that has slid off him.
There’s a cautious crunch of footsteps around the house – someone’s walking in the snow along the walls. Is that dog Gorelov sniffing around again? A dark silhouette flashes in the little window. Zuleikha drops noiselessly from the bed, tosses a sheepskin coat over her bare shoulders, and slips outside. There they are, tracks – dark blue and deep, as if they’ve been scooped out with a ladle – running around the commandant’s headquarters.