“The dirty dog,” Zuleikha utters loudly and walks around the corner.
A large figure wearing long clothing is standing by the back window, leaning forward, and pressing their nose to the snow-powdered glass. The collar of a long-haired dog fur coat is raised, and a pointy-tipped fur cap towers over their head like the top of a minaret.
The Vampire Hag.
“You old crone.” Zuleikha walks right up to her mother-in-law; she could reach out and touch her with her hand. “You’ve come to drink my blood again?”
The Vampire Hag pulls her pale face back from the glass as if she’s heard and turns toward Zuleikha. Her forehead, eye sockets, and cheeks are all plastered in white snow, as if it were chalk, and that snow isn’t melting. Only the nostrils on the white mask move – black holes taking in air – and her purple lips quiver, too.
“Go,” Zuleikha says angrily and clearly. “Get away!”
The mask opens the hollow of its mouth, breathes out thick, raggedy steam, and hisses, barely audibly.
“He will punish…” she says and a gnarled finger with a long, bent nail rises toward the sky. “He will punish you for everything…”
“Get out of here!” Zuleikha is shouting; her body is consumed by the full force of her anger. The roots of her hair are heating up and her heart is beating so it pushes at her ribs. “Don’t you dare come to me again! This is my life and you can’t order me around anymore! Out! Out!”
Her mother-in-law turns her back and hurriedly hobbles toward the forest, leaning on her tall, gnarled walking stick. Her huge, heavy felt boots squeak deafeningly on the snow and the long, thin strands of her white braids swing behind her back, in time with her steps.
“Witch!” Zuleikha hurls snow after her. “You died long ago! And your son, too!”
The Vampire Hag lifts a bony finger again as she walks, shaking it threateningly and pointing upward without turning around. Her figure diminishes and the squeaking of her steps fades behind brownish, brush-like spruces. Zuleikha looks up at the copper moon burning solemnly on the stern dark blue-and-black horizon. The moon is completely round, like a freshly minted coin. Night? Already? So that’s why it’s so quiet around her…
Yuzuf! Has he gone to bed? Did he fall asleep alone? She dashes to the infirmary, stumbling as she runs, her felt boots scooping up snow. Yuzuf isn’t in bed, and his boots, sheepskin coat, and skis aren’t there, either. Her son must have broken the rule again, today of all days – he probably thought she went hunting like always and went to meet her, and hasn’t returned.
Zuleikha grabs her skis. She returns to the commandant’s headquarters and makes her way inside, trying not to creak the door. She removes Ignatov’s heavy rifle from its nail, takes a hefty cartridge clip out of the nightstand, and shoves it in her pocket, then thinks and takes another. She casts a glance at the peacefully sleeping Ignatov and slips out.
Two thin streaks from Yuzuf’s skis wind along the rich blue snow. She races after him, recognizing his route. From the clubhouse at the edge of the settlement, Yuzuf went up toward the frozen Chishme, then skirted along the shore to the crossing at Bear Rock, where he usually lies in wait for her under the rowan bush. He marked time there for a while because there are lots of overlapping tracks in every direction. Her little boy froze by the forest brook, waiting for his mother as she was giving herself to her lover in a rumpled bed soaked in hot sweat.
The tracks lead further, into the urman. Yuzuf obviously went to find her when she hadn’t turned up. Zuleikha dashes after him. Trees decorated in white tower around her, interfering; black shadows and yellowish-blue stripes of snow painted with moonlight flash in her eyes. Further, further. Deeper into the urman, deeper.
“Yuzuf!” she shouts into a thicket. A large shelf of snow falls from a high branch, crashing to the ground. “Ulym! My son!”
Yuzuf’s ski tracks are growing fainter under drifts of snow. They appear again for a while then disappear, and soon they’re gone completely. Where to now?
“Yuzuf!”
Zuleikha races ahead and little clouds of snow puff up from under her skis.
“Yuzuf!”
The inky-black tops of spruce trees are dancing on the dark blue firmament and bold sparkling stars glisten between them.
“Yuzuf!”
The urman is silent.
There it is, retribution for an impious life outside marriage with an infidel, with her husband’s killer. For preferring him to her own faith, her own husband, and her own son. The Vampire Hag was right. Heaven has punished Zuleikha.
Sinking into the snowdrifts, she forces her way through crackling, thorny juniper bushes. She creeps over fallen birch trunks covered in slippery rime and struggles to make out the path through a spiky spruce thicket. Her ski suddenly catches a branch and Zuleikha flies forward, tumbling down some sort of steep hillock, churning up snow, and snapping her skis. The hard, prickly coldness pounds at her face, getting into her eyes, ears, and mouth. Her hands flail at the snow as she somehow makes her way out of the drift. She sees a piece of a broken ski in front of her. Not her ski but her son’s.
“Yuzuuuuf!”
She’s no longer shouting, she’s howling. And someone in front of her is howling in response. Up to her waist in snow, with the splintered remnants of her skis tangled in low bushes, she makes her way to a small clearing that’s tightly bordered on all sides by trees.
There, in a crowded, uneven ring clustered around a tall, old spruce with a tilting top, sits a sharp-nosed gray pack, looking intently upward. It’s winter and the wolves are lean; their skin stretches over their ribs and their spines look bristly. They notice Zuleikha, turn their snouts for a moment, and growl but don’t leave their spot. One suddenly leaps high, as if he’s been tossed, and snaps his teeth at the sharp top of the spruce where there’s a small, dark, motionless spot.
Zuleikha walks straight at the wolves, striding almost mechanically and loading the rifle along the way. Several animals stand and slowly scatter to greet her. They surround her, quivering their lips, showing their fangs, and jerking their tails. One of them, with transparent yellow eyes and a torn ear, breaks away and is the first to jump.
She shoots. Then again and again. She loads as quickly as she breathes, then again and again. She inserts the second clip, then again and again.
Yelping, harrowing squeals, whimpers, and wheezes. One of the wolves attempts to run away and hide in the woods but she doesn’t allow it. One lies with a broken spine, jerking its paws, and she fires point-blank, finishing it off. She’s shot all the cartridges, every last one. A half-dozen wolf carcasses lie around the spruce, on snow that glistens black with blood; there’s a smell of gunpowder, burned flesh, and singed fur; gashed intestines steam. It’s quiet. Zuleikha walks over the bodies, toward the crooked spruce.
“Yuzuf! Ulym!” she rasps.
From the treetop, a small body with the inanimate face of a doll, frosty brows and lashes, and eyes squeezed tightly shut falls straight into her outstretched arms.
Yuzuf lies delirious for four days. Zuleikha kneels beside his bed the whole time, holding his burning hand. She sleeps right there, her head resting against his shoulder.
Leibe attempts to move her to the next bed but she won’t allow it. He gives up and just draws a curtain dividing Yuzuf’s spot from the rest of the ward. Leibe has decided to put them here in the infirmary rather than at home, so he can always keep an eye on them.