Zuleikha Read online

  Guzel Yakhina is a Russian author and filmmaker of Tatar origins. She graduated from the Kazan State Pedagogical University and completed her PhD at the Moscow Filmmaking School. Zuleikha is her first novel. In addition to the Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Award, Zuleikha also won the Prose of the Year Prize, the Ticket to the Stars Award and was a finalist for the Russian Booker Prize.

  Lisa C. Hayden’s translations from the Russian include Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus, which won the Read Russia Award in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. Her blog, Lizok’s Bookshelf, examines contemporary Russian fiction. She lives in Maine, USA.

  ZULEIKHA

  Guzel Yakhina

  Translated from the Russian

  by Lisa C. Hayden

  CONTENTS

  Part One: The Pitiful Hen

  One Day

  A Knock at the Window

  An Encounter

  Part Two: Where to?

  Taking the Road

  Coffee

  Kazan

  Until Further Notice

  Escape

  The Barge

  Part Three: To Live

  Thirty

  Childbirth

  The First Winter

  The Settlement

  A Good Man

  The Shah Bird

  The Four Angels

  The Black Tent

  Part Four: Return

  The War

  Yuzuf and Zuleikha

  PART ONE

  THE PITIFUL HEN

  ONE DAY

  Zuleikha opens her eyes. It’s as dark as a cellar. Geese sigh sleepily behind a thin curtain. A month-old foal smacks his lips, searching for his mother’s udder. A January blizzard moans, muffled, outside the window by the head of the bed. Thanks to Murtaza, though, no draft comes through the cracks. He sealed up the windows before the cold weather set in. Murtaza is a good master of the house. And a good husband. His snoring booms and rumbles in the men’s quarters. Sleep soundly: the deepest sleep is just before dawn.

  It’s time. All-powerful Allah, may what has been envisioned be fulfilled. May nobody awaken.

  Zuleikha noiselessly lowers one bare foot then the other to the floor, leans against the stove, and stands. The stove went out during the night, its warmth is gone, and the cold floor burns the soles of her feet. She can’t put on shoes. She wouldn’t be able to make her way silently in her little felt boots; some floorboard or other would surely creak. Fine, Zuleikha will manage. Holding the rough side of the stove with her hand, she feels her way out of the women’s quarters. It’s narrow and cramped in here but she remembers every corner, every little shelf: for half her life she’s been slipping back and forth like a pendulum, carrying full, hot bowls from the big kettle to the men’s quarters, then empty, cold bowls back from the men’s quarters.

  How many years has she been married? Fifteen of her thirty? Is that half? It’s probably even more than that. She’ll have to ask Murtaza when he’s in a good mood – let him count it.

  Don’t stumble on the rug. Don’t hit a bare foot on the trunk with the metal trim, to the right, by the wall. Step over the squeaky board where the stove curves. Scurry soundlessly behind the printed cotton curtain separating the women’s quarters of the log house from the men’s … It’s not far to the door now.

  Murtaza’s snores are closer. Sleep, sleep, for Allah’s sake. A wife shouldn’t hide anything from her husband, but sometimes she must, there’s no helping it.

  The main thing now is not to wake the animals. They usually sleep in the winter shed but Murtaza orders the birds and young animals to be brought inside during cold snaps. The geese aren’t stirring but the foal taps his hoof and shakes his head; he’s awake, the imp. He’s sharp: he’ll be a good horse. Zuleikha stretches her hand through the curtain and touches his velvety muzzle: Calm down, you know me. His nostrils snuffle gratefully into her palm, recognizing her. Zuleikha wipes her damp fingers on her night-shirt and lightly pushes the door with her shoulder. Thick and padded with felt for the winter, the door gives way heavily, and a frosty, biting cloud flies in through the crack. She takes a big step over the high threshold so as not to jinx anything – treading on it now and disturbing the evil spirits would be all she needs – and then she’s in the entrance hall. She closes the door and leans her back against it.

  Glory be to Allah, part of the journey has been made.

  It’s as cold in the hallway as outside, nipping at Zuleikha’s skin so her nightshirt doesn’t warm her. Streams of icy air beat at the soles of her feet through cracks in the floor. This isn’t what troubles her, though.

  What troubles her is behind the door opposite.

  Ubyrly Karchyk – the Vampire Hag. That’s what Zuleikha calls her, to herself. She thanks the Almighty that they don’t live in the same house as her mother-in-law. Murtaza’s home is spacious, two houses connected by a common entrance hall. On the day forty-five-year-old Murtaza brought fifteen-year-old Zuleikha into the house, the Vampire Hag – her face a picture of martyred grief – dragged her own numerous trunks, bundles, and dishes into the guest house, and occupied the whole place. “Don’t touch!” she shouted menacingly at her son when he tried to help her move. Then she didn’t speak to him for two months. That same year, she quickly and hopelessly began to go blind, and then, shortly thereafter, to lose her hearing. A couple of years later, she was as blind and deaf as a rock. She now talks constantly and can’t be stopped.

  Nobody knows how old she really is. She herself insists she’s a hundred. Murtaza sat down to count recently, and he sat for a long time before announcing: “Mama’s right, she truly is around a hundred.” He was a late child and is already almost an old man himself.

  The Vampire Hag usually wakes up before everyone else and carries her carefully guarded treasure to the entrance hall: an elegant milky-white porcelain chamber pot with a fanciful lid and delicate blue cornflowers on the side. Murtaza brought it back from Kazan as a gift at one time or other. Zuleikha is supposed to jump at her mother-in-law’s call, then empty and carefully wash out the precious vessel first thing, before she stokes the fire in the stove, makes the dough, and takes the cow out to the herd. Woe unto Zuleikha if she sleeps through the morning wake-up call. It’s happened twice in fifteen years and she doesn’t allow herself to recall the consequences.

  For now, it’s quiet behind the door. Go on, Zuleikha, you pitiful hen, hurry up. It was the Vampire Hag who first called her zhebegyan tavyk – pitiful hen. Zuleikha started calling herself this after a while, too, without even noticing.

  She steals into the depths of the hallway, toward the attic staircase. She gropes at the smooth banister. The steps are steep; the frozen boards occasionally groan just enough to be heard. Scents of chilly wood, frozen dust, dried herbs, and a barely noticeable aroma of salted goose waft down from above. Zuleikha goes up: the blizzard’s din is closer, and the wind pounds at the roof and howls at the corners.

  She decides to go on all fours across the attic because were she to walk, the boards would creak right over the sleeping Murtaza’s head. If she crawls, though, she can scurry through. She weighs so little that Murtaza can lift her with one hand, as if she were a young ram. She pulls her nightshirt to her chest so it won’t get all dusty, twists it, takes the end in her teeth, and gropes her way between boxes, crates, and wooden tools, cautiously crawling over the crossbeams. Her forehead knocks into the wall. Finally.

  She raises herself up a little and peers out of the small attic window. She can hardly make out the houses of her native Yulbash, all drifted in snow, through the dark, gray gloom just before morning. Murtaza once counted, reaching a total of more than a hundred and twenty homesteads. A large village, that’s for sure. A village road smoothly curves and flows
off toward the horizon, like a river. Windows are already lighting in some houses. Quickly, Zuleikha.

  She stands and reaches up. Something heavy and smooth, with large bumps, settles into her hands: salted goose. Her stomach jolts, growling in demand. No, she can’t take the goose. She lets go of the bird and searches further. Here! Hanging to the left of the attic window are large, heavy sheets of paste that have hardened in the cold but give off a slight fruity smell. Apple pastila. The confection was painstakingly cooked in the oven, neatly rolled out on wide boards, and dried with care on the roof, soaking up hot August sun and cool September winds. You can bite off a tiny bit and dissolve it for a long time, rolling the rough, sour little piece along the roof of your mouth, or you can cram a lot in, chewing and chewing the resilient wad and spitting occasional seeds into your palm. Your mouth waters right away.

  Zuleikha tears a couple of sheets of pastila from the string, rolls them up tightly, and sticks them under her arm. She runs a hand over the rest. There’s still a lot, quite a lot, left. Murtaza shouldn’t figure anything out.

  And now to go back.

  She kneels and crawls toward the stairs. The rolled-up pastila prevents her from moving quickly. She truly is a pitiful hen now: she hadn’t even thought to bring any kind of bag with her. Zuleikha goes down the stairs slowly, walking on the edges of her curled-up feet because the soles are so numb she can’t feel them. When she reaches the last step, the door on the Vampire Hag’s side swings open noisily and a shadowy silhouette appears in the black opening. A heavy walking stick knocks at the floor.

  “Anybody there?” the Vampire Hag’s deep, masculine voice asks the darkness.

  Zuleikha goes still. Her heart pounds and her stomach shrinks into an icy ball. She wasn’t fast enough. The pastila is thawing, softening under her arm.

  The Vampire Hag takes a step forward. In fifteen years of blindness, she has learned the house by heart, so she moves around here freely and confidently.

  Zuleikha flies up a couple of stairs, her elbow squeezing the softened pastila to her body more firmly.

  The old woman turns her chin in one direction then another. She doesn’t hear or see a thing but she senses something, the old witch. Yes, a Vampire Hag. Her walking stick knocks loudly, closer and closer. Oh, she’ll wake up Murtaza!

  Zuleikha jumps a few steps higher, presses against the banister, and licks her chapped lips.

  The white silhouette stops at the foot of the stairs. The old woman’s sniffing is audible as she noisily draws air through her nostrils. Zuleikha brings her palms to her face. Yes, they smell of goose and apples. The Vampire Hag makes a sudden, deft lunge forward and swings, beating at the stairs with her long walking stick, as if she’s hacking them in half with a sword. The end of the stick whistles somewhere very close and smashes into a board, half a toe’s length from the bare sole of Zuleikha’s foot. Feeling faint from fright, Zuleikha flops on the steps like dough. If the old witch strikes once more … The Vampire Hag mumbles something unintelligible and pulls the walking stick toward herself. The chamber pot clinks dully in the dark.

  “Zuleikha!” The Vampire Hag’s shout blares toward her son’s quarters.

  Mornings usually start like this in their home.

  Zuleikha forces herself to swallow. Has she really escaped notice? Carefully placing her feet, Zuleikha creeps down the steps. She bides her time for a couple of moments.

  “Zuleikhaaa!”

  Now it’s time. Her mother-in-law doesn’t like to say it a third time. Zuleikha bounds over to the Vampire Hag, “Right here, right here, Mama!” and she takes from her hands a heavy pot covered with a warm, sticky moistness, just as she does every day.

  “You turned up, you pitiful hen,” her mother-in-law grumbles. “All you know how to do is sleep, you lazybones.”

  Murtaza has probably already woken up from the noise and may come out to the hallway. Zuleikha presses the rolled-up pastila more tightly under her arm (she can’t lose it outside!), gropes with her feet at someone’s felt boots on the floor, and races out. The storm beats at her chest and takes her in its solid fist, trying to knock her down. Zuleikha’s nightshirt rises like a bell. The front steps have turned into a snowdrift overnight and Zuleikha walks down, feeling carefully for the steps with her feet. She trudges to the outhouse, sinking in almost to her knees. She fights the wind to open the door. She hurls the contents of the chamber pot into the icy hole. When she comes back inside, the Vampire Hag has already gone to her part of the house.

  Murtaza drowsily greets Zuleikha at the threshold with a kerosene lamp in his hand. His bushy eyebrows are knitted toward the bridge of his nose, and his cheeks, still creased from sleep, have wrinkles so deep they might have been carved with a knife.

  “You lost your mind, woman? Out in a blizzard, undressed?”

  “I just took Mama’s pot out and back.”

  “You want to lie around sick half the winter again? So the whole household’s on me?”

  “What do you mean, Murtaza? I didn’t get cold at all. Look!” Zuleikha holds out her bright-red palms, firmly pressing her elbows to her waist; the pastila bulges under her arm. Is it visible under her shirt? The fabric got wet in the snow and is clinging to her.

  But Murtaza’s angry and isn’t even looking at her. He spits off to the side, stroking his shaved skull and combing his splayed fingers through his scruffy beard.

  “Get us some food. And be ready to leave after you clear the yard. We’re going for firewood.”

  Zuleikha gives a low nod and scurries behind the curtain.

  She did it! She really did it – yes, she, Zuleikha, yes, she, the pitiful hen! And there they are, the spoils: two crumpled, twisted, clumped-up pieces of the most delicious pastila. Will she be able to deliver it today? And where should she hide these riches? The Vampire Hag roots around in their things when they’re out so she can’t leave it in the house. She’ll have to bring it with her. Of course that’s dangerous. But Allah seems to be on her side today, so she should be lucky.

  Zuleikha tightly rolls the pastila into a long band and winds it around her waist. She lowers her nightshirt over it and puts on a smock and baggy wide pants. She braids her hair and throws on a scarf.

  The dense gloom outside is thinning by the head of her bed, diluted by the overcast winter morning’s feeble light. Zuleikha pulls back the curtains – anything’s better than working in the dark. The kerosene lamp standing on the corner of the stove casts a little slanted light on the women’s quarters but the economizing Murtaza has turned the wick so low the flame is barely visible. Never mind; she could do all this blindfolded.

  A new day is beginning.

  By noon, the morning snowstorm has subsided and the sun is peering out of a sky that has turned bright blue. They set off for firewood.

  Zuleikha is sitting at the rear of the sledge, her back to Murtaza, watching the houses of Yulbash grow distant. Green, yellow, deep blue, they’re looking out from under the snowbanks like brightly colored mushrooms. Tall white candles of smoke melt away in the celestial blueness. Snow crunches loudly and deliciously under the runners. Sandugach, perky in the frosty cold, occasionally snorts and shakes her mane. The old sheepskin under Zuleikha warms her. The precious band around her belly is warm and heats her, too. If only she can manage to deliver it today.

  Her arms and back ache. A lot of snow piled up during the night and Zuleikha spent a long time sinking her shovel into the snowbanks to clear broad paths in the yard, from the front steps to the large storehouse, to the small storehouse, to the privy, to the winter shed, and to the back yard. After all that work, it’s nice to sit and do nothing on the rhythmically swaying sledge, to sit so comfortably, bundled up in a strong-smelling sheepskin coat, to stick her numbed hands into her sleeves, rest her chin on her chest, and close her eyes …

  “Wake up, woman, we’re there.”

  Gigantic trees surround the sledge. White pillows of snow on spruce boughs and sprawling heads of pin
e trees. Rime on birch branches as fine and long as a woman’s hair. Powerful walls of snowdrifts. Silence for many versts around.

  Murtaza binds laced snowshoes to his felt boots, jumps down from the sledge, flings his rifle on his back, and tucks a large axe into his belt. He takes his poles in his hands and doesn’t look back as he confidently tramps a path into the thicket. Zuleikha is right behind him.

  The forest near Yulbash is good, bountiful. In the summer it feeds the villagers with large wild strawberries and sweet-beaded raspberries; there are pungent mushrooms in autumn. There is a lot of game. The Chishme flows from the forest’s depths, usually gentle, shallow, and filled with swift fish and sluggish crayfish, but it’s rapid, grumbling, and swollen with meltwater and mud in the spring. During the Great Famine, it was these alone – the forest and the river – that saved people. And Allah’s mercy, too, of course.

  Murtaza has gone a long way today, almost to the end of the forest road. This road was built in the old days and leads through to the far border of the light part of the forest. It then extends into Last Clearing, which is surrounded by nine crooked pines, and breaks off. There is no further road. The forest ends and there begins the urman: dense evergreen woods, thickets broken by storms, and the abode of wild animals, forest spirits, and all kinds of evil. Centuries-old black spruce trees with sharp, spear-like tops grow so thickly in the urman that a horse cannot go through. And there are no pale-colored trees – red pines, speckled birch, or gray oak – whatsoever.

  People say it’s possible to go to the lands of the Mari people by walking through the urman, away from the sun for many days in a row. But what person in his right mind would decide to undertake such a journey? The villagers didn’t even dare cross the border of Last Clearing during the time of the Great Famine. They nibbled at tree bark, ground acorns from the oaks, and dug up mouse burrows in search of grain, but they did not venture into the urman. The few who did were never seen again.