The doctor himself suggests she bring Yuzuf back to the infirmary from the dining hall during her afternoon absences at the logging sites, and Zuleikha gratefully agrees.
When a lemon-yellow man with a constant violent cough and black circles under his eyes is admitted to the infirmary, Leibe orders that they move into the residential quarters, with him. Zuleikha hesitates at first – what will people say? – but when she meets the doctor’s stern gaze, she hurriedly brings her son into the back of the infirmary, behind a solid door.
That happens in late summer. The second year of the exiles’ stay in the settlement is beginning.
Zuleikha places a kettle with bandages inside the hot stove. She always launders and rinses the bandages in the running water of the Angara; her hands feel wooden after that, aching, making it all the more pleasant to hold them against the hot side of the stove, sensing the flow of blood into her hands and feeling the skin on her fingertips again. The fire crackles under the base of the blackened kettle, greedily eating the rest of a log that’s been tossed in. Zuleikha will have time to run out to the yard for firewood while the water comes to a boil – the bandages aren’t supposed to boil for long but she likes to keep them in until they’re white.
Yuzuf is frolicking on the floor, crawling and playing with clay toys that Ikonnikov sculpted. First he’d made a round-bellied baby doll resembling a fat spindle with plump lips that look like they’ve been turned inside out; then came a pompous tufted bird with shaggy legs and funny wings not designed for flight; and finally there came a sturdy, hefty fish with insolently bugged eyes and a stubborn lower jaw. The toys are good since they’re neither too large nor overly small, each fitting comfortably into a child’s small hand, nor heavy, and – most important – each one has a living gaze. In addition, they have the extraordinarily convenient benefit in that the legs, wings, and fins that Yuzuf breaks off have a habit of growing back after Ikonnikov drops in at the infirmary while going about his errands.
While Yuzuf’s enjoying knocking together the fragile clay foreheads of eternal rivals – the bird and the fish – Zuleikha rushes to go out to the yard so her son won’t notice she’s gone. The door opens on its own a moment before Zuleikha has a chance to touch it. A tall, dark silhouette stands in the opening, coming through rays of sun that beat at Zuleikha’s face. A wide, floor-length dress flaps in the wind and a crooked staff sternly bangs at the threshold.
The Vampire Hag.
She strides into the house. Her nose leads her, its broad nostrils twitching, inhaling air.
“It smells of something,” she says.
Zuleikha jumps away, her back screening Yuzuf, who’s playing on the floor. He’s crawling, babbling something under his breath, ramming the little hand that’s tightly squeezing the fish at the bird, who’s rapidly retreating under the enemy onslaught. He doesn’t notice a thing. Zuleikha’s mother-in-law walks about, sniffing loudly and using her stick to toss things that fall in her path. It’s as if she clearly sees them. An overturned chair crashes, an empty bucket rolls and clanks, and empty little clay dishes fly from the table to the floor.
“It smells!” she repeats, loudly and insistently.
There are strong smells of scorching-hot stove stones and boiling bandages in the house, and weaker smells of smoke, seasoned firewood, and fresh wood. The faintest smells of carbolic acid and alcohol hover, and a spicy, flowery aroma comes from fat bunches of herbs hanging under the ceiling.
The old woman is coming toward her. Zuleikha sees her flat, white eye sockets, coated with a bluish film like the skin of a freshly cleaned fish and covered with a thick network of knotty red blood vessels. Her soft and very sparse hair the color of dust is parted at the exact middle of her forehead in a neat path, and wound into long, thin braids.
The Vampire Hag breathes hard and her nostrils make a snuffling sound. The tip of her stick reaches for the hem of Zuleikha’s dress and lifts it, baring pale, naked legs that seem to gleam in the duskiness of the house. Zuleikha made her baggy pants into diapers long ago, back last autumn. The old woman smirks so the corner of her mouth creeps upward and sinks into the large folds of her wrinkles.
“I found what smells,” she says. “It’s fekhishe, the smell of whore.”
Nobody had ever called Zuleikha that. A horrid, suffocating heat rises from her chest, over her neck, cheeks, and forehead, to the very top of her head.
“Yes,” the Vampire Hag repeats louder. “The smell of a whore who thinks at night about the Russian man Ivan, murderer of my Murtaza…”
Zuleikha shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut. There was no denying it.
“…and is living with a German man, the infidel Volf!”
“I need to raise my son,” Zuleikha whispers through her dried throat, “to put him on his feet. He’s already over a year old but doesn’t walk. He can’t even stand. And that’s your grandson.”
She steps to the side, revealing her son sitting on the floor for the Vampire Hag, as if she truly could see him. Yuzuf keeps playing – the fish and the bird are united in his persistent little hands and jointly attacking the poor doll, who already lacks an arm.
The Vampire Hag squeamishly pulls her walking stick away from Zuleikha, as if she’s been dirtied by muck.
“You forgot about sharia law and human law. I used to tell Murtaza, ‘That woman’s unfit, unclean in both body and thought –’”
“Murtaza died. I have the right to marry a second time!”
“And before the eyes of all the people, she’s spending the night under the same roof as a man who’s not her husband! Who is she after that? A whore is who!” The old woman loudly and juicily spits under her feet.
“I’ll become the doctor’s lawful wife!”
“Fekhishe! Whore! Whore!” The Vampire Hag shakes her head slightly and the bulky flourishes of her earrings jingle softly in her fleshy earlobes.
“I swear!” Zuleikha’s head sinks into her shoulders and she quickly lifts a hand, defending herself.
When she lowers her hand, there’s no longer anyone beside her. Yuzuf is peacefully frolicking, enjoying knocking his clay toys together. The wood in the stove crackles as it burns; water is burbling loudly, spilling out of the kettle, and hissing on scorching-hot coals. Zuleikha sits down on the floor alongside her son, buries her face in her hands, and whimpers quietly, like a puppy.
On the last day of summer, white clouds are floating like apple blossoms, and the Angara is dark, a deep blue verging on black that rises from its depths on particularly warm and sunny days. There’s a light, dry autumn warmth.
Zuleikha is striding along a forest path. Yuzuf is on her back, wrapped in a shawl, and she has a basket in one hand and a staff in the other. Reddish tree needles and the first fallen leaves, fragile and already tinged with a sickly yellowness, crunch underfoot. She is grateful to Achkenazi for letting her go into the taiga today to pick berries for compote. It’s already darkening early in the evenings, so she can’t go after dinner. This is an excuse devised by the maître, since they could have gotten by without compote today – it’s not a holiday and the chief isn’t expected to arrive. But Achkenazi felt sorry for her so decided to give her a day off. He sees she’s not herself lately, isn’t sleeping much, and works enough for three.
Zuleikha is afraid to go too far away from the settlement – just in case something happens with Yuzuf – so she walks to a familiar stand of bilberry plants in the pine forest. She steps on large, flat rocks to cross a brook that roars resoundingly (she thinks of it as the Chishme), then strides further along it, to the base of the large cliff where there sprawls a broad, light clearing, which she’s privately named “Round Clearing.” There’s a patch of plentiful berries hidden here, guarded by a huge old birch scorched by lightning and a detachment of red-trunked pines. Large, beady bilberries grow so plentifully, like stars in the sky on a clear night, that you can just sit and gather them. The berries are heavy and purple and they look like they’re covered with light-blue velvet; touch one and a dark trace remains on its round side. They’re juicy, sweet, and honeyed, too. Zuleikha has plenty to eat herself and feeds Yuzuf. He’s smiling and his teeth shine with the berries’ ink. This is delicious, and joyful, too, because he has his mother’s attention for so long without her leaving.