Zuleikha opens her eyes with a brief description. Review of modern Russian historical prose

I read the text as if I was unraveling the paths in the forest along which Zuleikha Valieva went hunting. She learned to glide silently without scaring the beast or disturbing her mother-in-law's peace during her fifteen years of marriage with her husband, who was three times her age. This skill came in handy later on the banks of the Siberian Angara River, where she was exiled as the wife of a dispossessed man. But already without a husband. He was killed in front of his wife by Ivan Ignatov, “a Red Horde man in a pointed cloth helmet with a brown star.”

Fate turned in such a way that it was he who became the main man for Zuleikha for the next fifteen years of her life. And when the nimble opportunist Gorelov encroached on her relationship with the murderer of her own husband, she accurately put a bullet in the eye. Belka. Which was a few centimeters from Gorelov’s eyes.

As Zuleikha opened her eyes to everything that was happening around her, her life changed, with the same sharp turns. A quiet, submissive, “little woman with green eyes” at the moment of choice becomes strong, decisive and tough, choosing the most extreme option, without compromise.

The entire novel is built on parallels. Here is Murtaza, the lawful husband. He never called his wife by name, only “woman.” Ignatov, the commandant of the twenty-nine souls who survived the winter in a dugout on the right bank of the Angara, did not call her at all, only asked: “Stay. Stay..." And only at the end of the novel he called by name: "Go away, Zuleikha..."

Which one does she prefer? − Son. Yuzuf. A child born after the death of her husband, pressed against her mother’s body for a year for lack of warmth and clothing. Pressed to her forever with the same blood, which she let him suck from her finger instead of mother's milk during the hungry winter... It's scary to read about it.

- You are in me, son, my heart. You have my blood in your veins. Under the meat are my bones... I didn’t kill them. They themselves died. From hunger... And do you hear, son? We didn't eat them. We buried them. You were just little and forgot everything.

This phrase is not spoken by Zuleikha, no. Upyrikha's mother-in-law spoke these words to her son Murtaza. But how similar is the situation in which both mothers sacrifice themselves, laws, and norms of ordinary life. Because a life in which you have to pierce your fingers with a sharpened spoon to save a child cannot be called ordinary. But who will judge them? After all, even the horse stood across the convoy with the dispossessed, preventing its further movement, in order to feed the foal. And no Red Army, no Soviet government will be able to move the mare from its place, will not be able to tear the offspring away from her udder. And the convoy is forced to accept:

“Ignatov takes off his Budenovka, wipes his flushed face, and glares at Zuleikha angrily.

“Even your mares are a complete counter-revolution!”

People died for this very revolution. They died at transit points, starved in heated cars, drowned in rusty barges, froze in dugouts, were chilled by the terrible abbreviations OGPU, NKVD, GULAG...

Guzel Yakhina seemed to have gone through this whole hellish path of enemies of the people herself. A thorough knowledge of historical details seems to leave no doubt about this. Only the year of publication of the book and the age of the author tell us that this is not an autobiography, but a work of fiction. Or maybe the genetic call of the ancestors guides the writer’s hand, adding to the dry archival information something that makes the text painful, grabbing not by the throat, but by an unknown point in the chest, in the area of the solar plexus, when, as you inhale, you read the scene of parting with your son, and you can’t breathe out, because the scene goes on and on, and you empathize with the heroine as if it were your son going into the unknown, and you can even wring your hands, even howl with heartache throughout the entire Siberian taiga, but it will be as the man decided .

There are no footnotes in the book for Tatar words and expressions. Not every reader will think of going to the last page for clarification. But this only intensifies the sense of identity of what is happening. National names of clothing, mythical heroes, household items - bichura, ulim, eni, kulmek - fit organically into the narrative outline, are read without translation, and by the end of the novel are perceived as already known words.

Despite all the hopelessness of life, there is one completely happy character in the dispossessed camp, Doctor Leibe. Fate gave him a reliable defense during his trials - madness. The author of the book depicted mental illness in the form of an egg, which, like a cocoon, protects the doctor from the horror of repression. Invisible protection was given to the professor so that he would preserve his knowledge and experience, and at the most crucial moment he would use it for its intended purpose, taking the most important birth in his life - with the green-eyed Zuleikha.

Everyone at that time was looking for a cocoon that would save them. Some - in moonshine, others - in drawing Paris on fragments of plywood, others - in snitching, and others - in love. Despite the tragedy of the topic, this book tells us exactly about love. There are no everyday descriptions of intimate encounters here. In the camp for exiled kulaks and declassed elements, everything is very tough, without manicure and bows on the dress. “Death was everywhere, Zuleikha understood this as a child.” But life was everywhere! And where there is life, there is love...

The commandant counted twenty-one nationalities in the contingent entrusted to him for re-education. Lukka Chindykov, a Chuvash, broken by the same fighters for the idea as this senior lieutenant of the NKVD, will save his overseer Ignatov’s life by throwing himself into a boiling mess of logs and foam. And this is also love. Not to this specific person, but to the human race as a whole.

“The Angara is already teeming with the dark backs of logs, like a school of giant fish jostling in a stream... You can hear the logs cracking loudly and terribly in the distance, in the caravan.”

Why the country needed so much forest, why it was necessary to dispossess and send innocent people into exile - such questions could not be asked out loud in the thirties of the last century.

Tatyana Taran, Vladivostok

Book reviewer

Katerina Maas

At the end of last year, the debut novel of the young Tatar writer Guzel Yakhina, beating out two other finalists by a wide margin, took first place in the Big Book Award.

The story of the exiled Zuleikha was called nothing less than a “serious epic” in most reviews, and some reviewers pointed to an exhaustive description of women’s experience as one of the main advantages of the novel.

Unfortunately, the heroine never opened her eyes.

At the center of the story is Zuleikha, the wife of a wealthy Tatar peasant. Due to circumstances, left without a husband or any support, she finds herself among other exiles sent to previously unexplored territories for “correction.”

Judging by the title of the book, along the way the heroine had to experience a moral and intellectual rebirth and grow as a person. However, for various reasons, this not only does not happen, but the book turns out to be a mishmash of attempts to say this and that, and not an attempt to convey the turning point of the era through the fate of an individual.

On the one hand, in the first third of the book, Yakhina managed to maintain both the rhythm and mood of the narrative. Vivid, almost Tarantino-esque images; a cinematic presentation of the daily life of a peasant wife (there is no time for traditional values, I wish I could stay alive); the underlying horror of hunger and a hundred other unknown dangers that await a person at every step - all this literally covers the reader with an avalanche from the first pages.

Zuleikha perceives the world as something that exists on its own and cannot be described. This is the look of a completely frightened victim of many years of violence - the heroine can only humbly accept the blows of fate, and, as far as possible, avoid the most powerful ones. She does not see patterns, does not understand the reasons and prerequisites, cannot analyze the situation and draw any conclusions. Moreover, Zuleikha does not perceive herself as a subject, a person capable of independent decisions and actions - although she subconsciously feels that she could.

Readers, along with Zuleikha, freeze in horror while listening to her mother-in-law’s stories about the times of the Great Famine, together with the heroine they try to hide from her husband, who decided to “teach” his wife, and feel disgust during the scenes of rape. At the same time, the writer was well able to convey and share the point of view of the author and the heroine: Zuleikha is not able to assess what is happening to her as violence, and the author, represented by Yakhina, at the same time gives a completely clear assessment of what is happening.

But as soon as the action leaves the closed ecosystem of the village, Zuleikha loses her position as the heroine of the novel, and finds herself one of three characters between whom the time will be divided on the remaining pages of the book. The writer failed to introduce two other characters into the story - very important for the story in general and the heroine in particular - in such a way that the focus remained on Zuleikha. This breaks the constructed narrative sequence and does not allow the novel to become a truly comprehensive description of women's experience.

Only the emerging subjectivity of the heroine is instantly forgotten, and the experiences and reflections of the two male characters come to the fore. Moreover, Zuleikha finds herself in the position of an object in relation to new characters - all the prerequisites for the formation of personality disappear, the heroine again provokes noble soul impulses in one hero, then glimpses of reason amid the darkness of madness in another. In addition, there are two points that could have been central to a book about women's experiences, but were not. And why?

One of the most important moments in the heroine's life - childbirth - is described from the doctor's point of view, moreover, it becomes a kind of turning point in the life of the male character. But not female. No one, including the writer, is interested in what the heroine herself thinks about what happened - and this is strange, because in the first third of the novel Yakhina herself dwells in detail on the thoughts and feelings of a young woman who lost four babies born from a rapist. And where is all this? Until the end of the book, Zuleikha will only serve as an object of desire for the commandant, an object of pity for the exiles, and a food distribution point for her son. The female character is again reduced to a function she performs - both in terms of the relationships of the characters in the book and in terms of the narrative.

In this sense, the second part of the novel comes into dissonance with the first: having given the heroine a ghostly chance to gain self-awareness, Yakhina loses the thread of the narrative, gets lost in trying to talk about every third-rate character, and in general is constantly distracted. In addition, the action constantly jumps one year, then seven years ahead, and this makes it difficult to build a picture of the heroine’s personal growth. A good start was destroyed by the pretense of epicness, and at the end we got another film, Once Upon a Time There Was a Woman.

One of the few - besides the lush images of the first part of the novel - advantages of the book, which I simply must mention: Yakhina very accurately managed to capture all the inconsistency of fighting with fists. Formally, Zuleikha is considered a kulak, but in fact, isn’t she the very oppressed, dark part of society for whose liberation her overseer is fighting? Perhaps it would be more interesting to read about the development of this conflict between the declared and actual state of affairs. But what it is, that is: this is a very uneven novel, in which criticism of collectivization and resettlement of peoples, an attempt to talk about women’s experience in exile, and the writer’s struggle with herself are mixed together.

Failed writers are always given examples of people who have not found a response from publishing houses for a long time. Guzel Yakhina would have continued to try to adapt the text for a long time, but she was lucky - she was published by AST, namely the Editorial Office of Elena Shubina. An unnecessary story instantly gains many readers, the author becomes the winner of three prestigious awards: “Book of the Year”, “Yasnaya Polyana” and “Big Book”, her first major creation is included in the short list of “Russian Booker” and “Nose”. Net income from awards alone exceeded five million rubles. Why is Yakhina not an example for failed writers after such success? You need to not give up and believe in yourself to the end, even if there really is nothing worthy in you.

The book “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” greets the reader with threads of dried tears. Everything is bad in the life of the main character, a victim of domestic violence. And while the country is plunged into darkness, dispossessed by the poor, the light goes out in Zuleikha’s gaze. Every time she opens her eyes and sees injustice. Hitting her is her husband’s favorite pastime. Harassing her is a passion of the old mother-in-law. Since she is short, she has to sleep on a chest. Will Zuleikha survive under such circumstances if she continues to bear future dead? It is impossible to give birth to a son. Nothing holds daughters back. Maybe Yakhina did not want to breed a new brood of victims of reality? We need a boy, but he is not there.

Oppression in the family applies only to Zuleikha. She humbly accepts the traditions of the people, when a woman is not supposed to claim rights. One gets the feeling that the main character lives in a closed world, where the Red Horde NEP members, greedy for crops and livestock, sometimes penetrate, so that the reader finally understands how hard life was in the twenties of the 20th century. No feminism and no rights to a piece of land. You constantly owe someone: even if you die, pay it back. It's impossible to escape. Zuleikha could not demand respect for her dignity, no matter how she opened her eyes. Destined to obey the will of others.

The period of Zuleikha’s stay in her husband’s house is an ideal representation not only of the suffering of the Tatars at that difficult time, but also a characteristic description of the everyday life of the population during the formation of the Soviet state. The reader will not learn anything new from the text. Yakhina suggests looking at the past from a slightly different angle - from the perspective of a Muslim woman. While peasants and workers overthrew the kulaks, slaves could not count on liberation from oppression. Make up or get a bullet in the forehead, if you declare the dignity of an individual, then you will have to prove your case before a heavenly judge.

The opening episodes are a treasure trove of useful information. What is happening on the pages clearly appears before the eye. It seems that the intensity of passions will only increase further, and the thirst for reading will intensify. But when it comes to dispossession, a six-month stay in a carriage and the long-awaited settlement in Siberia, then the reluctance of publishers to give way to the debut work of a then little-known author becomes understandable. Nobody believed in the possibility of promoting a book with such content.

Yakhina didn’t have enough fire - we have to admit it. All her energy went into depicting the everyday life of a woman in the unfortunate circumstances of domestic violence, which she could know about personally or through stories. Each line is filled with pain, giving an understanding of the true nature of man, who is no different from an animal. Whoever is stronger is the one who “rapes”: Zuleikha is the husband, the husband is the NEP.

The illusion of negativity blooms wildly as soon as the main character’s ordeal begins. You shouldn't expect to find happiness. Everything is going from bad to worse. However, we must admit that Zuleikha is always lucky. She, as a true representative of the wisdom of the Eastern man, subconsciously understands the benefits of misfortunes. The chain of events that happens to her is built by Yakhina accordingly - at first the main character almost drowns, after which she safely floats up, awaiting the next problems.

I went through the stages - I escaped death from infection, the ship sank - I gave birth to a son, the war began - someone should be free. In the series of situations described, you need to be prepared for sharp plot twists. The more Zuleikha suffers, the better. It is necessary to let her experience all the hardships of the most extreme degree, so that the reader again and again sympathizes with the main character.

Such a baby is able to survive everyone and continue to obey the people around her. She was not brought up in the spirit of that time, so she is perceived by a person from the outside. Her once limited understanding of the world expanded dramatically for her, only her inner world remained within its previous boundaries. It turns out that a person cannot make a qualitative leap from an awareness of dependence to an understanding of personal freedom: he continues to live according to medieval ways, without striving to become part of a matured world. Zuleikha does not feel the need to rise above reality - she is part of the system.

Did Yakhina want to show the limitations of the main character? Why does Zuleikha open her eyes only literally? The reader will not experience spiritual growth. The plot rails will carry the car forward, new characters will appear, lines of destinies will begin to intersect and diverge again. The initial tragedy turns into melodrama. Everyone is already suffering, including former punishers. There is no need to talk about justice - this concept did not exist in the Soviet Union. If it was necessary to make someone an enemy of the people, then they did it; received honor and respect - then they went along with others along the stage. The country has become a camp for everyone. Maybe that’s why Zuleikha didn’t try to escape.

The main character wanted one thing - to live. She is ready to accept any humiliation just to continue breathing and open her eyes once again. It was impossible to break her. After all, it is difficult to break someone who has been accustomed to endure bullying from an early age. The steel was hardened in her father’s house, so Zuleikha had to remain steadfast, which is what she does until the last pages.

When there is no way out, a person does the impossible. This happens to Zuleikha all the time, causing supernatural powers to awaken in her. She doesn't understand how she manages to do something like this. Yakhina only manages to create such situations. Here Zuleikha drags her husband home and puts him to bed, now she almost drowns, but here she boldly goes against a dozen wolves, not giving them a chance to get to her, putting them down one by one with well-aimed shots. This cannot happen in real life. On the pages of the book, the author is not limited in understanding the reality of what is happening - he is the master of the situation, having his own point of view.

Guzel Yakhina

Zuleikha opens her eyes

The book is published under an agreement with the literary agency ELKOST Intl.

Love and tenderness in hell

This novel belongs to that type of literature that, it would seem, has been completely lost since the collapse of the USSR. We had a wonderful galaxy of bicultural writers who belonged to one of the ethnic groups inhabiting the empire, but wrote in Russian. Fazil Iskander, Yuri Rytkheu, Anatoly Kim, Olzhas Suleimenov, Chingiz Aitmatov... The traditions of this school are a deep knowledge of national material, love for one’s people, an attitude full of dignity and respect towards people of other nationalities, a delicate touch to folklore. It would seem that there will be no continuation of this, a disappeared continent. But a rare and joyful event happened - a new prose writer, a young Tatar woman Guzel Yakhina, came and easily joined the ranks of these masters.

The novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” is a magnificent debut. It has the main quality of real literature - it goes straight to the heart. The story about the fate of the main character, a Tatar peasant woman from the time of dispossession, breathes such authenticity, reliability and charm, which are not so often found in recent decades in the huge stream of modern prose.

The somewhat cinematic style of the narration enhances the drama of the action and the brightness of the images, and the journalistic style not only does not destroy the narrative, but, on the contrary, turns out to be an advantage of the novel. The author returns the reader to the literature of precise observation, subtle psychology and, most importantly, to that love, without which even the most talented writers turn into cold recorders of the diseases of the time. The phrase “women's literature” carries with it a disparaging connotation, largely at the mercy of male criticism. Meanwhile, women only in the twentieth century mastered professions that until that time were considered male: doctors, teachers, scientists, writers. During the existence of the genre, men have written hundreds of times more bad novels than women, and it’s hard to argue with this fact. Guzel Yakhina’s novel is, without a doubt, female. About female strength and female weakness, about sacred motherhood, not against the backdrop of an English nursery, but against the backdrop of a labor camp, a hellish reserve invented by one of the greatest villains of humanity. And it remains a mystery to me how the young author managed to create such a powerful work glorifying love and tenderness in hell... I heartily congratulate the author on the wonderful premiere, and the readers on the magnificent prose. This is a brilliant start.

Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Part one

Wet chicken

One day

Zuleikha opens her eyes. It's dark like a cellar. Geese sigh sleepily behind a thin curtain. A one-month-old foal slaps its lips, searching for its mother's udder. Outside the window at the head of the room is the dull groan of a January snowstorm. But it doesn’t blow from the cracks - thanks to Murtaza, I caulked the windows before it got cold. Murtaza is a good host. And a good husband. He snores loudly and richly on the male side. Sleep tight, before dawn is the deepest sleep.

It's time. Allah Almighty, let us fulfill our plans - let no one wake up.

Zuleikha silently lowers one bare foot to the floor, then the other, leans on the stove and stands up. It cooled down overnight, the warmth was gone, and the cold floor burned my feet. You can’t put on shoes - you won’t be able to walk silently in the felt boots, some floorboard will creak. It’s okay, Zuleikha will be patient. Holding his hand on the rough side of the stove, he makes his way to the exit from the women's quarters. It’s narrow and cramped here, but she remembers every corner, every ledge—for half her life she’s been sliding back and forth like a pendulum, all day long: from the cauldron to the men’s half with full and hot bowls, from the men’s half back with empty and cold ones.

How many years has she been married? Fifteen out of your thirty? This is even more than half of my life, probably. You'll have to ask Murtaza when he's in the mood - let him do the math.

Don't trip over the rug. Do not hit your bare foot on the forged chest on the right side of the wall. Step over the creaky board at the bend of the stove. Silently slip behind the calico charshau separating the women's part of the hut from the men's... Now the door is not far away.

Murtaza's snoring is closer. Sleep, sleep for the sake of Allah. A wife should not hide from her husband, but what can you do - she has to.

Now the main thing is not to wake the animals. Usually they sleep in a winter barn, but in severe cold, Murtaza orders to take the young animals and birds home. The geese do not move, but the foal tapped his hoof, shook his head - the devil woke up. He will be a good horse, sensitive. She reaches out her hand through the curtain, touches the velvet muzzle: calm down, yours. He gratefully puffs his nostrils into his palm - he admitted. Zuleikha wipes her wet fingers on her undershirt and gently pushes the door with her shoulder. Tight, upholstered with felt for the winter, it gives heavily, and a sharp frosty cloud flies through the crack. He takes a step, crossing a high threshold - it was not enough to step on it right now and disturb the evil spirits, pah-pah! - and finds himself in the hallway. He closes the door and leans his back against it.

Glory to Allah, part of the journey has been completed.

It’s cold in the hallway, just like outside—it stings your skin, your shirt doesn’t keep you warm. Jets of icy air hit my bare feet through the cracks in the floor. But it's not scary.

The scary thing is behind the door opposite.

Ubyrly karchyk- Upyrikha. Zuleikha calls her that to herself. Glory to the Almighty, the mother-in-law lives with them in more than one hut. Murtaza's house is spacious, consisting of two huts connected by a common entryway. On the day when forty-five-year-old Murtaza brought fifteen-year-old Zuleikha into the house, Upyrikha, with martyrdom on her face, dragged her numerous chests, bales and dishes into the guest hut and occupied it all. "Don't touch me!" – she shouted menacingly to her son when he tried to help with the move. And I didn’t talk to him for two months. That same year, she began to quickly and hopelessly go blind, and after some time, she began to go deaf. A couple of years later she was blind and deaf as a stone. But now she was talking a lot and couldn’t stop.

Nobody knew how old she really was. She claimed a hundred. Murtaza recently sat down to count, sat for a long time - and announced: his mother is right, she really is about a hundred. He was a late child, and now he is almost an old man.

The vampire usually wakes up before everyone else and brings out into the hallway her carefully kept treasure - an elegant chamber pot of milky white porcelain with soft blue cornflowers on the side and a fancy lid (Murtaza once brought it as a gift from Kazan). Zuleikha is supposed to jump up at the call of her mother-in-law, empty and carefully wash the precious vessel - the first thing, before lighting the oven, putting in the dough and leading the cow out to the herd. Woe to her if she sleeps through this morning wake-up call. In fifteen years, Zuleikha slept through twice - and forbade herself to remember what happened next.

The book is published under an agreement with the literary agency ELKOST Intl.

© Yakhina G. Sh.

© AST Publishing House LLC

Love and tenderness in hell

Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Part one
Wet chicken

One day

Murtaza is a good host. And a good husband. He snores loudly and richly on the male side. Sleep tight, before dawn is the deepest sleep.

It's time. Allah Almighty, let us fulfill our plans - let no one wake up.

How many years has she been married? Fifteen out of your thirty? This is even more than half of my life, probably. You'll have to ask Murtaza when he's in the mood - let him do the math.

Murtaza's snoring is closer. Sleep, sleep for the sake of Allah. A wife should not hide from her husband, but what can you do - she has to.

Glory to Allah, part of the journey has been completed.

It’s cold in the hallway, just like outside—it stings your skin, your shirt doesn’t keep you warm. Jets of icy air hit my bare feet through the cracks in the floor. But it's not scary.

The scary thing is behind the door opposite.

It’s still quiet outside the door. Come on, Zuleikha, you wet chicken, hurry up. Wet chicken - Zhebegyan Tavyk– Upyrikha called her for the first time. Zuleikha didn’t notice how, after a while, she began to call herself that.

She sneaks into the depths of the hallway, towards the stairs to the attic. Feels for the smooth-hewn railing. The steps are steep, the frozen boards groan faintly. From above there is a whiff of frozen wood, frozen dust, dry herbs and the faint aroma of salted goose. Zuleikha gets up - the sound of the snowstorm is closer, the wind beats against the roof and howls in the corners.

He decides to crawl around the attic on all fours - if he walks, the boards will creak right above the head of the sleeping Murtaza. And she crawls along, the weight in her is nothing at all, Murtaza lifts it with one hand like a ram. She pulls her nightgown to her chest so as not to get dirty in the dust, twists it, takes the end in her teeth - and by touch she makes her way between drawers, boxes, wooden tools, and carefully crawls over the cross beams. He rests his forehead against the wall. Finally.

He gets up and looks out the small attic window. In the dark gray pre-dawn haze, the snow-covered houses of your native Yulbash are barely visible. Murtaza once thought that there were more than a hundred households. It's a big village, to say the least. The village road, bending smoothly, flows like a river beyond the horizon. In some places the windows in the houses were already lit. Rather, Zuleikha.

She stands up and reaches up. Something heavy, smooth, and large-pimpled lies in the palm of your hand—salted goose. The stomach immediately shudders and growls demandingly. No, you can't take the goose. He lets go of the carcass and searches further. Here! To the left of the attic window hang large and heavy panels, hardened in the frost, from which there is a barely audible fruity scent. Apple marshmallow. Carefully boiled in the oven, carefully rolled out on wide boards, carefully dried on the roof, absorbing the hot August sun and cool September winds. You can bite off a little at a time and suck for a long time, rolling the rough, sour piece across the palate, or you can stuff your mouth and chew, chew the elastic mass, spitting the occasional grain into your palm... Your mouth instantly fills with saliva.

Zuleikha tears a couple of sheets from the rope, rolls them tightly and tucks them under her arm. He runs his hand over the remaining ones - there are many, many more left. Murtaza should not guess.

And now - back.

She gets to her knees and crawls towards the stairs. The marshmallow scroll prevents you from moving quickly. It’s really a wet chicken, I didn’t think to take any bag with me. He goes down the stairs slowly: he can’t feel his legs - they are numb, he has to put his numb feet sideways, on the edge. When he reaches the last step, the door on the Upyrikha side swings open with a noise, and a light, barely visible silhouette appears in the black opening. A heavy stick hits the floor.

- Is there anyone? - Upyrikha asks the darkness in a low male voice.

Zuleikha freezes. My heart is pounding, my stomach is squeezing into an icy lump. I didn’t have time... The marshmallow under my arm thaws and softens.

The ghoul takes a step forward. Over fifteen years of blindness, she has learned the house by heart - she moves around in it confidently and freely.

Zuleikha flies up a couple of steps, clutching the softened marshmallow tightly to herself with her elbow.

The old woman moves her chin one way and the other. She doesn’t hear anything, doesn’t see, but she feels, the old witch. One word - Upyrikha. The stick knocks loudly - closer, closer. Eh, he’ll wake up Murtaza...

Zuleikha jumps a few more steps higher, presses herself against the railing, licks her dry lips.

A white silhouette stops at the foot of the stairs. You can hear the old woman sniffing, noisily sucking in air through her nostrils. Zuleikha brings her palms to her face - that’s right, they smell like goose and apples. Suddenly, Upyrikha makes a deft lunge forward and swings her long stick at the steps of the stairs, as if cutting them in half with a sword. The end of the stick whistles somewhere very close and, with a ringing sound, pierces the board a half-toe away from Zuleikha’s bare foot. The body weakens and spreads like dough down the steps. If the old witch hits again... The ghoul mutters something incomprehensible and pulls the stick towards her. The chamber pot clinks dully in the darkness.

- Zuleikha! - Upyrikha shouts loudly at her son’s half of the hut.

This is how the morning usually starts at home.

Zuleikha swallows a lump of thick saliva with her dry throat. Did it really work out? Carefully rearranging his feet, he slides down the stairs. Waits a couple of moments.

- Zuleikha-ah!

But now it’s time. The mother-in-law doesn’t like to repeat it a third time. Zuleikha jumps up to Upyrikha - “I’m flying, I’m flying, mom!” - and takes the heavy pot, covered with warm sticky sweat, from her hands, as he does every day.

“Here you are, a wet chicken,” she grumbles. - Just sleep and much, lazy...

Murtaza probably woke up from the noise and might go out into the hallway. Zuleikha clutches a marshmallow under her arm (she wouldn’t lose it on the street!), feels someone’s felt boots on the floor with her feet, and runs out into the street. The blizzard hits the chest, grabs it in a tight fist, trying to tear it away from its place. The shirt rises like a bell. The porch turned into a snowdrift overnight, - Zuleikha goes downstairs, barely making sense of the steps with her feet. Falling almost knee-deep, he wanders to the latrine. Struggling with the door, opening it against the wind. Throws the contents of the pot into the icy hole. When she returns to the house, Upyrikha is no longer there - she has gone to her place.

A sleepy Murtaza meets him on the threshold, holding a kerosene lamp. Bushy eyebrows are shifted to the bridge of the nose, the wrinkles on the cheeks wrinkled from sleep are deep, as if carved with a knife.

-Are you crazy, woman? In a snowstorm - naked!

“I just took my mother’s pot out and then back...

– Do you want to lie sick for half the winter again? And put the whole house on me?

- What are you saying, Murtaza! I wasn't frozen at all. Look! – Zuleikha stretches her bright red palms forward, pressing her elbows tightly to her belt, – the marshmallow bristles under her arm. Can't you see it under your shirt? The fabric is wet in the snow and sticks to the body.

But Murtaza is angry and doesn’t even look at her. He spits to the side, strokes his shaved skull with his outstretched palm, and combs his tousled beard.

- Come on, eat. Once you clear the yard, get ready. Let's go get some wood.

Zuleikha nods low and sneaks behind the charshau.

Happened! She did it! Oh yes Zuleikha, oh yes wet chicken! Here it is, the prey: two crumpled, twisted, stuck together rags of delicious marshmallow. Will it be possible to carry it today? And where to hide this wealth? They cannot be left at home: in their absence, Upyrikha rummages through things. You'll have to carry it with you. Dangerous, of course. But today Allah seems to be on her side - she must be lucky.

Zuleikha tightly wraps the marshmallow in a long rag and wraps it around her belt. He lowers his undershirt and puts on a kulmek and trousers. She braids her hair and throws on a scarf.

The dense darkness outside the window at the head of her bed becomes thinner, diluted with the stunted light of a cloudy winter morning. Zuleikha throws back the curtains - anything is better than working in the dark. The kerosene stove standing on the corner of the stove casts a little slanting light on the women's half, but the thrifty Murtaza twisted the wick so low that the light is almost invisible. It's not scary, she could do everything blindfolded.

A new day begins.

Even before noon, the morning snowstorm died down, and the sun peeked through the bright blue sky. We went out to get firewood.

Zuleikha sits on the back of the sleigh with her back to Murtaza and looks at the retreating houses of Yulbash. Green, yellow, dark blue, they look like bright mushrooms from under the snowdrifts. Tall white candles of smoke melt into the heavenly blue. The snow crunches loudly and deliciously under the runners. Occasionally, Sandugach, cheerful in the cold, snorts and shakes his mane. An old sheepskin under Zuleikha warms you up. And the treasured rag is warm on your stomach - it also warms. Today, just to have time to take it today...

Her arms and back ache - there was a lot of snow at night, and Zuleikha spent a long time digging into the snowdrifts with a shovel, clearing wide paths in the yard: from the porch - to the large barn, to the small barn, to the outhouse, to the winter stable, to the back yard. After work, it’s so nice to laze around on a rhythmically swaying sleigh - sit comfortably, wrap yourself deeper in a fragrant sheepskin coat, put your numb palms in the sleeves, rest your chin on your chest and close your eyes...

- Wake up, woman, we've arrived.

Huge trees surrounded the sleigh. White pillows of snow on spruce paws and spreading heads of pine trees. Frost on birch branches, thin and long, like a woman's hair. Mighty shafts of snowdrifts. Silence for many miles around.

Murtaza ties wicker snowshoes onto his felt boots, jumps off the sleigh, throws a gun on his back, and tucks a large ax into his belt. He picks up sticks and, without looking back, confidently follows the path into the thicket. Zuleikha is next.

The forest near Yulbash is good and rich. In the summer he feeds the villagers with large strawberries and sweet grainy raspberries, and in the fall - with fragrant mushrooms. There is a lot of game. The Chishme flows from the depths of the forest - usually gentle, small, full of fast fish and clumsy crayfish, and in the spring it is swift, grumbling, swollen with melted snow and mud. During the Great Famine, they were the only ones who saved us - the forest and the river. Well, the mercy of Allah, of course.

Today Murtaza drove far, almost to the end of the forest road. This road was laid in ancient times and led to the border of the light part of the forest. Then it stuck into the Extreme Glade, surrounded by nine crooked pines, and broke off. There was no further way. The forest ended - a dense urman began, a windfall thicket, the abode of wild animals, forest spirits and all sorts of evil spirits. Centuries-old black spruces with sharp spear-like tops grew in the urman so often that a horse could not pass. And there were no light trees - red pines, speckled birches, gray oaks - there at all.

They said that through Urman you can come to the lands of the Mari - if you walk from the sun for many days in a row. What kind of person in their right mind would decide to do this?! Even during the Great Famine, the villagers did not dare to cross the border of the Extreme Glade: they ate bark from trees, ground acorns from oak trees, dug mouse holes in search of grain - they did not go to the urman. And those who walked were never seen again.

Zuleikha stops for a moment and places a large basket of brushwood on the snow. He looks around worriedly - after all, it was in vain that Murtaza had driven so far.

– How far is it still, Murtaza? I can’t see Sandugach through the trees anymore.

The husband does not answer - he makes his way forward waist-deep in the virgin snow, resting against the snowdrifts with long sticks and crushing the crunchy snow with wide snowshoes. Only a cloud of frosty steam rises overhead every now and then. Finally he stops near a tall, flat birch tree with a lush growth of chaga and pats the trunk approvingly: this one.

First they trample the snow around. Then Murtaza takes off his sheepskin coat, grabs the curved ax handle more tightly, points the ax into the gap between the trees (where we will fall) - and begins to chop.

The blade sparkles in the sun and enters the birch side with a short, resounding “chang”. "Oh! Oh!" - echoes. The ax cuts off the thick, intricately patterned bark with black bumps, then plunges into the soft pink wood pulp. The wood chips splash like tears. Echoes fill the forest.

“You can hear it in the street,” Zuleikha thinks anxiously. She stands a little further away, waist-deep in the snow, clutching the basket, and watches Murtaza chop. Far away, with a pull, he swings, elastically bends his body and accurately throws the ax into the splintered white crack on the side of the tree. Strong man, big. And it works skillfully. She got a good husband, it’s a shame to complain. She herself is small, barely reaching Murtaza’s shoulder.

Soon the birch tree begins to tremble more strongly and moan louder. The wound carved out by an ax in the trunk looks like a mouth open in a silent scream. Murtaza throws the ax, shakes off twigs and twigs from his shoulders, nods to Zuleikha: help. Together they rest their shoulders against the rough trunk and push it - harder, harder. A rustling crack - and the birch tree collapses to the ground with a loud farewell groan, raising clouds of snow dust into the sky.

The husband, riding the conquered tree, cuts off its thick branches. The wife breaks off the thin ones and collects them in a basket along with brushwood. They work for a long time, silently. My lower back ache, my shoulders filled with fatigue. My hands, even though they are wearing mittens, are freezing.

– Murtaza, is it true that your mother went to Urman for several days when she was young and returned safe? – Zuleikha straightens her back and arches at the waist, resting. “Abystay told me, and her grandmother told her.”

He doesn’t answer, aiming his ax at a crooked, gnarled branch sticking out of the trunk.

“I would die of fear if I were there.” My legs would probably give out right away. She would lie on the ground, close her eyes, and pray without ceasing while her tongue moved.

Murtaza strikes hard, and the branch bounces springily to the side, humming and trembling.

“But they say prayers don’t work in Urman.” Pray or don’t pray, it’s all the same - you’ll die... What do you think... - Zuleikha lowers her voice: - ... are there places on earth where the gaze of Allah does not penetrate?

Murtaza swings wide and drives the ax deeply into the log that rings in the cold. He takes off his malakhai, wipes his reddened, hot naked skull with his palm and spits deliciously at his feet.

They get to work again.

Soon the brushwood basket is full - you can’t lift it, you just drag it behind you. Birch – cleared of branches and cut into several logs. Long branches lie in neat bundles in the snowdrifts around.

We didn’t notice how it was getting dark. When Zuleikha raises her eyes to the sky, the sun is already hidden behind torn wisps of clouds. A strong wind blows, the snow whistles and blows.

“Let’s go home, Murtaza, the snowstorm is starting again.”

The husband does not answer, continuing to wrap thick bundles of firewood with ropes. When the last bundle is ready, the blizzard is already howling like a wolf between the trees, drawn-out and evil.

He points with a fur mitten at the logs: first, let's move them. Four logs in the stumps of former branches, each longer than Zuleikha. Murtaza, grunting, tears off one end of the thickest log from the ground. Zuleikha takes on the second one. It’s impossible to lift it right away; it fiddles around for a long time, adjusting to the thick and rough wood.

- Come on! – Murtaza cries out impatiently. - Woman!

Finally I did it. Hugging the log with both hands, pressing his chest against the pinkish whiteness of the fresh tree, bristling with long sharp splinters. They move towards the sleigh. They walk slowly. The hands are shaky. Just not to drop it, God, just not to drop it. If you fall on your leg, you will remain crippled for life. It becomes hot - hot streams flow down the back and stomach. The treasured rag under your chest gets wet through - the marshmallow will taste like salt. It’s nothing, just to have time to deliver it today...

Sandugach obediently stands in the same place, lazily moving his feet. There are few wolves this winter, Subkhan Allah, so Murtaza is not afraid to leave his horse alone for a long time.

When they dragged the log onto the sled, Zuleikha falls next to her, takes off her mittens, and loosens the scarf around her neck. It hurt to breathe, as if she were running without stopping through the entire village.