Zuleikha thinks so much about her son that she often forgets about her own groaning stomach and the weakness that sometimes overcomes her. She’s very afraid of getting sick. Who would look after Yuzuf then? Her past life – Yulbash’s open spaces, the threatening Murtaza, the nasty Vampire Hag, the long trip in the railroad car with the smells of hundreds of people – has slipped so far away, remaining behind such sharp turns, that it seems like a half-forgotten dream, a vague recollection. Did all that really happen to her? Her life now is catching the doctor’s calm gaze (“Everything’s fine with Yuzuf, don’t worry, Zuleikha…”), waiting for Ignatov to return from hunting and Lukka from fishing (“Meat! We’re going to eat meat today!”), and curling up on the bunk like a ring around her sleeping son and inhaling, inhaling his delicate smell.
It’s quiet in the underground house. The exiles are already pressed up against one another, sleeping. After eating their fill of salty soup and embracing one another, Konstantin Arnoldovich and Izabella are wheezing a little, Ikonnikov is gently snoring, Gorelov is lost in a heavy, tense slumber, and Ignatov is lying on his separate bunk like a dead man, not moving.
Yuzuf shudders and his little nose moves sleepily – he’s looking for Zuleikha. She’s recently stopped carrying him around and he’s been getting used to living on his own, without maternal warmth and scent surrounding him from all sides. As soon as she ends up alongside him, though, he seeks to press into her like before, worm his way in, and stick all his skin against her. As he does now. After his face has found his mother, he burrows himself in her chest, flattening his nose. He lies calmly for a minute or two then starts fidgeting away and his lips begin smacking. He’s sensed the smell of milk. He’ll wake up now.
And he does. He grunts and moans a little, sobs a couple of times and bursts out in hungry, demanding wailing. Zuleikha shushes her son affectionately and takes him in her arms. Her fingers get tangled in the frayed fasteners on her smock as she hurriedly opens the collar. She takes out a soft, flimsy breast and places it in the baby’s hungry, wide-open mouth. Yuzuf hastily chews the limp nipple and spits – there’s no milk. He cries louder. One person coughs hoarsely in the depths of the bunks and another turns over with a groan, mumbling unintelligibly.
Zuleikha shifts Yuzuf to her other arm and gives him her second breast. He goes silent for a moment, his toothless gums frantically yanking at the second nipple. It hurts so much, she notices with joyful amazement. Could it really be his first tooth? She doesn’t have time to think that through, though, because Yuzuf spits out her breast, which has deceived him with its familiar smell. Now he’s crying loudly, sobbing. His little face instantly floods with blood and his fists twist in the air.
She leaps up and rocks Yuzuf, bending so she doesn’t hit her head on baskets, bunches of feathers, rolls of birch bark, bundles of pine cones, and other junk hanging from the ceiling.
Sometimes he can be successfully rocked, settled down, convinced, and whispered to so he’ll fall asleep without even eating, giving Zuleikha the gift of a few more hours of precious silence. One time, she tried rocking Yuzuf in a cradle, a large basket hanging from the ceiling, but he completely refused to fall asleep by himself. He always wants to be in his mother’s arms.
She presses her lips to his small head, which is very warm and damp from sweat. She mumbles half-forgotten lullabies in his tender little ear and whispers, casting a spell. She rocks him, first gently and evenly, then harder, more abruptly, and swinging more. She puts a homemade fabric pacifier in his tiny mouth but he spits it out and continues screaming. Between lips that are wide open and already covered with a slight nervous blueness she can see his tiny dark pink gums, glistening with spittle and completely smooth: there’s no first tooth on them. Yuzuf is already almost six months old but his teeth haven’t grown in.
Zuleikha jiggles his tense, arched little body. His crying is so shrill and loud that it hurts the ears. People roll over on their bunks, sighing, but continuing to sleep. They’re used to this.
She takes someone’s spoon left from supper and scrapes the bottom of the pot for a couple of drops of salty soup and places that in Yuzuf’s mouth. He makes an offended face, spits, and chokes from crying so hard. His voice is already tired and a little hoarse, and the soft spot on his head pulses frequently and heavily, as if it wants to explode.
Zuleikha’s back aches and she places Yuzuf’s bellowing little body on the bunk and sits beside him. She lowers her head to her knees and plugs her ears, but it’s no quieter because it’s as if her son’s crying has settled in her head. In moments like these, Zuleikha sometimes thinks it would have been easier for Yuzuf if he had departed during childbirth.
Out of the corner of her eye, she notices a slight motion in the middle of the underground house. It’s as if a breeze has wafted, making the long shadows that extend from the stove door give a start, sway, and begin fidgeting. Zuleikha raises her head. The Vampire Hag is sitting right by the stove, on a gnarled wooden block made from a piece of an old pine stump, her elbows leaning into sharp knees set far apart.
Yellow specks of light from the fire tremble on her parchment-like forehead, streaming over hilly cheeks and flowing away into the hollows of her mouth and eye sockets. Her braids hang down toward the earthen floor like gaunt, shaggy ropes. Crescent-shaped earrings of dulled gold swing ever so slightly in her droopy, wrinkled earlobes, splashing light on the dark walls, the bunks, and human bodies sleepily tossing and turning.
The Vampire Hag stirs the remainder of the salty soup for a long time, then taps the spoon thoroughly and places it on the edge of the pot.
“My son never cried that hard,” she calmly says. “Never cried that hard.”
White drops of salty soup flow from the shell spoon and fall back in the pot, plinking. Surprised, Zuleikha wonders how she can hear it through the crying.
Yuzuf is still bellowing and wheezing beside her. A fine spasm runs through his twisted little body and his lips are rapidly turning a rich blue.
Large, hefty drops continue falling from the spoon into the pot. Each is like a hammer striking. They’re no longer plinking but thundering. So loudly they muffle her son’s voice.
Zuleikha walks over to the kettle and takes the spoon. She grasps the handle in her fist and hits the sharp side of the pearlescent shell exactly at the center of the middle finger on her other hand. The small but deep semicircular gash is like a crescent and it spurts out something thick, dark, and ruby red. She returns to the bunk and places her finger in her son’s mouth. She feels his hot gums squeeze right away, biting and seizing at her fingernail. Yuzuf sucks greedily, groaning and gradually calming. His breathing is still rapid and his little hands still shudder from time to time. But now he’s not crying: he’s busily feeding and he grunts every now and then, as he used to when he drank milk. Zuleikha watches the blueness leave his tiny lips, his cheeks grow pink, and his eyes eventually close from exhaustion and satisfaction. Taut red bubbles swell in the corners of his tiny mouth from time to time, bursting and running to his chin in little winding streams.
It’s not painful at all.
She looks up but now there’s nobody at the stove.
Spring arrives suddenly, unexpectedly – it’s loud, booming, and strong-smelling. All morning, rambunctious bird chirps have been bursting through the pieces of rags that stop up the house’s little windows. The chirping is a teasing invitation that finally turns into the heavy, distinct thought that Ignatov has to go hunting.
His eyelids open. His body has lightened of late; it’s as if it lacks bones, though for some reason it’s difficult to carry. It’s even become hard to think. His head is empty, as if it’s flat and made of paper. His thoughts are somehow weightless and fleeting, too, like shadows or smells, so if you don’t seize them, you won’t fully think them through. That’s why this morning’s thoughts are unwieldy, stirring in his skull like a lazy fish, and seeming so important and necessary. He has to get up and go hunting.