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Zuhra opens her eyes read online in full. Love in extreme conditions

Zuhra opens her eyes read online in full. Love in extreme conditions

14.03.2019

Bizyaeva Daria

In 2015, which is declared the Year of Literature in Russia, the novel by a young writer Guzel Yakhina “Zuleikha opens her eyes” was among the book winners. The novel entered short list awards "Big Book" and "Russian Booker". at the Moscow International book fair the book was awarded the Book of the Year honorary award in the Prose nomination, and in Kazan, as part of the Aksenov Fest 2015, the writer became a laureate of the Star Ticket international award. In addition, in October, G. Yakhina received the literary award " Yasnaya Polyana" in the nomination "XXI century". But ordinary readers made their choice first. According to the results of open Internet voting, it was this novel was recognized as the best. This work is devoted to the analysis of this novel.

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For the competition "Aksakov's Readings"

(based on the novel by Guzel Yakhina "Zuleikha opens her eyes")

Work completed

9th grade student

MBOU "Makulovskaya secondary school"

Verkhneuslonsky district of the Republic of Tatarstan

Bizyaeva Daria Evgenievna

Supervisor:

teacher of Russian language and literature

Belkina Tatyana Alekseevna

Zuleikha's long road to inner freedom

(Based on the novel by G. Yakhina "Zuleikha opens her eyes")

Preface.
Problems of the novel "Zuleikha opens her eyes".
This is a difficult path for many ... Zuleikha is on the way to revival
Afterword.

Holy woman's destiny
Don't miss your heartache,
And your heart's prayer -
Will be able to reach the sky.

And your gentle hands are warm,
Warm in severe frosts.
Support when it's hard
Shed holy tears of love.

Foreword

Literary Prize. It is awarded annually to well-known and emerging authors of works for a special contribution to the development of literature. Undoubtedly, the most significantThe most important and prestigious international prize is the Nobel Prize.The largest in Russia and the CIS literary award is the Big Book Award, which has been awarded since 2005. Interestingly, the jury awards not only the winners of the year, but also marks the writers with special prizes: "For contribution to literature", "For honor and dignity".

Since 2003, the State Memorial and nature reserve"Museum-estate of Leo Tolstoy" and Samsung Electronics established the annual all-Russian literary award "Yasnaya Polyana". Awarded for the best piece of art traditional form in two categories: "Modern Classics" and "XXI century".

In 2015, which is declared the Year of Literature in Russia, the novel by a young writer, our compatriot Guzel Yakhina “Zuleikha opens her eyes” was among the book winners. The novel was shortlisted for the Big Book and Russian Booker awards. At the Moscow International Book Fair, the book was awarded the Book of the Year honorary award in the Prose nomination, and in Kazan, as part of Aksenov Fest 2015, the writer became a laureate of the Star Ticket international award. In addition, in October, G. Yakhina received the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Prize in the 21st Century nomination. But ordinary readers made their choice first. According to the results of an open Internet voting, this particular novel was recognized as the best.

Lyudmila Ulitskaya, author of the preface to the novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes,” explains the success of this book and its author in this way: “This novel belongs to a kind 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 who wrote in Russian. Fazil Iskander, Yuri Rytkheu, Anatoly Kim, Olzhas Suleimenov, Chingiz Aitmatov… The traditions of this school are deep knowledge national material, love for one's people, a dignified and respectful attitude towards people of other nationalities, a delicate touch to folklore. It would seem that this will not be continued, the disappeared mainland. But a rare and joyful event happened - a new prose writer came, a young Tatar woman Guzel Yakhina, and easily joined the ranks of these masters.

The problems of the novel "Zuleikha opens her eyes"

What is this novel, which has received such a high rating from both experts and the reader, about? The author herself, in a conversation with correspondents of various newspapers and magazines, says this:"This work, probably, first of all, is about a woman and her fate, about how the heroine turns from a downtrodden creature into a real person, finds herself, begins new life, while, it would seem, life is over. And the second idea - that in every misfortune, in every grief, even the biggest one, there may be a seed of future happiness - I also wanted to express this idea.

Of course it is main issue novel. But along with this problem, others are deeply disclosed in the novel: the problem of dispossession, which actually affected many people in our country, the problem of the relationship between a man and a woman, “the position of a woman in Muslim world and in the Soviet space”, the repressed intelligentsia, maternal self-sacrifice, the ability not to lose oneself in the inhuman conditions of the Gulag. It is also a novel about fortitude and human values. In a word, this is a novel about the terrible pages of the history of our country and its people, which experienced many trials in the last century: wars, famine, devastation, collectivization, political repression, during which the best of the best were humiliated and destroyed, who had no idea to fight against their people. Hundreds of thousands of tortured, shot, ruined party members, millions of peasants who were victims of dispossession, marshals and generals, scientists and poets, writers and artists who were in fact devoted to their Motherland. This is a novel about them.

I heard many times that it was a period when a father denounced his son, a husband denounced his wife and vice versa, a neighbor against a neighbor ... A terrible time. Each was for himself, easily stepped over the life of another, destroying human fates. In the novel "Zuleikha opens her eyes" these are former prisoner Gorelov, who denounced his own people, Zinovy Tsygan, who built his career rise on criminal activity. And also Grunya and her roommate Stepan, who, for the sake of additional space in a communal apartment, wrote a denunciation of the professor of Kazan University Wolf Karlovich Leibe, who did not understand at the time of his arrest what meanness towards him was carried out by those whom he considered close people.

Also important is story line associated with the development of relations between Zuleikha and Ivan Ignatov. Ivan Ignatov is the commander of the "Red Horde", as Zuleikha calls all those who came to Yulbash to dispossess local residents, including her husband Murtaza. It is he who kills Murtaza, but he also saves Zuleikha when she finds herself in ice water Angara, draws up a metric and gives money to Yuzuf, the son of Zuleikha, so that he can secretly leave the Siberian village of Semruk for Leningrad to fulfill his dream. Perhaps only he, one of the GPU workers who accompanied the “enemies of the people” to their place of exile, remains a Man. Ignatov more than once catches himself thinking that he is sorry for Zuleikha. Crossing out those arrested from the list of those who died along the way, he "sees not letters, but faces." He increasingly mentally judges himself. The saved life of Zuleikha seemed to him a forgiveness for the death of those whom he locked on the barge and could not open the lock to release them when the barge sank. There, in Siberia, he began to feel responsible for the surviving 29 settlers, including Russians and Tatars, Chuvashs and Mordvins, a Mari, a crest, a Georgian, a German Leibe. Many of them understood the state of Ignatov's soul, helped him, and once saved him from death. And for Zuleikha, he eventually became a "good person."

The fate of Ignatov is evidence that everything in life depends only on the person himself. In the same conditions and vicissitudes of life, some lose their human appearance, while others remain human.

The fate of the representatives of the intelligentsia, who do not lose themselves even here, in the remote taiga, is also interesting. Professor Leibe fulfills his medical duty - he treats people, brings them back to life, without complaining about the difficulties. The artist Ikonnikov, in his free time from the campaign mural of the club, continues to write"on the canvases at his disposal, some of his paintings." Possessing a professional and even photographic memory, he painted Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg, everything that was close and dear to him. He also introduced the son of Zuleikha Yuzuf to drawing. And Isabella teaches the boy French. The fisherman Luka, who left the boat to Yuzuf, the one-armed Avdey– they are very different, these migrants. And simple hard workers, and peasants, and creative and scientific intelligentsia, managed to survive, did not break down and were able to stay people.

The fates of all these heroes are closely connected with the fate of main character, Zuleikhi.

It is a difficult path for many...

Zuleikha on the way to revival

Who is she, our heroine? Why is her life of interest to our readers? In my opinion, the fate of Zuleikha imprinted the fate of many Soviet women of that period.

She was only 15 years old when she was married to 45-year-old Murtaza, in marriage with whom she never experienced either female or maternal happiness. Her husband did not love her, beat her, humiliated her. For fifteen years of living together, she got used to the idea that her place is on the chest, that she has no right to argue with her husband, that she must fulfill all the whims of her mother-in-law, Upyrikha, as Zuleikha called her to herself. She insulted her in a way that even Murtaza did not insult her. “A rotten root will rot, but a healthy one will live,” said Vampirekha, reproaching her daughter-in-law for giving birth only to girls. There were four of them: Shamsia, Firuza, Khalida, Sabida. They all died, for which the mother-in-law Zuleikha blamed. And Zuleikha herself, half-starved, furtively from her husband took something from the house to appease the spirits of the cemetery. “Pleasing the spirit is not an easy task. You need to know which spirit loves what. Living in the hallway bichur , for example, is unpretentious. You expose her to a couple of unwashed plates with the remnants of porridge or soup - she will lick at night, and she is happy. Bath bichur - more capricious, give her nuts or seeds. The spirit of the barn loves flour, the spirit of the gate loves pounded eggshell. But the spirit of the outskirts is sweet. That's how my mother taught me." She prayed to the spirit of the cemetery to “look after the graves of her daughters, cover them with warmer snow, drive away evil spirits.”

At thirty, she looked thin, angular, "a wet chicken," as her husband called her. With the death of her husband (Ignatov kills him), it is Zuleikha who has to face trials as the wife of a fist. She does not make excuses, no one stands up for her, although everyone in the village knows how she lived. Leaving Yulbash, Zuleikha does not yet know what trials await her ahead. But it is from this moment that her path to a new life begins. It is no coincidence that the village is called Yulbash: translated into Russian, it means "beginning of the road." This will be the path from a downtrodden peasant woman to a free woman.

The image of the road runs through the whole work. This is the way and literally: movement on horseback, by train, by barge, - and figuratively: the inner path of the revival of Zuleikha herself. However, death accompanies her everywhere: the death of her daughters, husband, fellow travelers.

Was she lucky, Zuleikha? Yes! Most likely, she was lucky for the torment that fell to her lot earlier. What is this luck about: they were sent on a journey a little earlier, as the typhus epidemic broke out, survived in the car, “crammed full of human lives”, did not drown with others in the Angara, learned what love is. The main thing: fate gave her a son, in whose birth she did not believe. More precisely, she did not believe that the child would live. With his appearance came the first feeling of happiness. Yes, the stomach ached from hunger, but the soul sang, and "the heart beat with one name: Yuzuf." It was also lucky that on her new life path she met Professor Leibe, who delivered her right on the road, and then more than once saved the sick Yusuf from death. Next to her were those who saw in her a woman and a friend, who helped her become a strong woman, able to stand up for herself and for her son.

Zuleikha became a real mother. She went hunting on a par with men, supplying the artel with meat, serving lunches to lumberjacks, scrubbing evening time hospital wards, washed bandages, but never forgot about her son, or rather, she did everything for him, her Yusuf, who became the meaning of her life.

How real mother she was ready to give up personal happiness with Ivan Ignatov when she found out that her son was lost in the taiga. She was not afraid of wolves or bears. Feeling guilty towards her son, she knelt at his bedside for four days while he was delirious.

Zuleikha's views on the norms of life also changed. She began to pray less, but not because she stopped believing in Allah, but because she began to understand more that her salvation was in herself. Now it "seemed silly to waste precious minutes of life on memories of the dead." Now she was no longer afraid of the Upyrikha, who came to her in a dream and, insulting her, as before, foreshadowed trouble.

It was not easy for Zuleikha to make the decision to let her son go. accompanying him,« Zuleikha peers, straining her sharp hunting eyesight. A boy stands in the boat and desperately waves his hands to her - dark hair is disheveled, his ears fly apart, tanned hands are thin, fragile, bare knees in dark abrasions: seven-year-old Yuzuf leaves her, swims away, says goodbye. She screams, throws up her hands, opens her palms - son! And she waves, waves in response with both hands - so strongly, widely, furiously that she is about to take off ... The boat moves away, decreases - and her eyes see the boy better, clearer, more distinct. She waves until his pale face disappears behind a huge hill. And many more after, long waves.

Zuleikha will wander, not noticing the time and the road, trying not to breathe, so as not to multiply the pain.

Zuleikha opens her eyes. The whole meaning of the novel is hidden in the title of the work: Zuleikha, a downtrodden, dark, uneducated, humiliated and offended woman, became strong and free.

How will her fate turn out? What will be the fate of your son? The question remains open.

Guzel Yakhina herself says that there will be no continuation of the novel: “I confess that initially I wanted to extend the story further - to make one more chapter about the present, where the 85-year-old Yuzuf would return to Semruk, to the places of his childhood. From this chapter, we would learn the life story of Yusuf - how he got to Leningrad, became an artist, then emigrated to France. He never saw his mother, Zuleikha, again. But then I still decided not to include this chapter in the final text of the novel - it looked inorganic.

It's probably right. At the very least, we must reckon with the opinion of the author.

Afterword

How will the "life" of the novel develop in the future? I think that the answer is unequivocal: it will be a long and wonderful destiny. Such books do not disappear without a trace. They attract the attention of more and more readers with their freshness, depth of content.

Reading an interview with Guzel Yakhina in the newspaper "Republic of Tatarstan" No. 165 dated November 19, 2015, I learned that the work was originally written as a screenplay, only then the script turned into a novel. The author does not exclude that a film can be made based on the material of the novel. “This story has the potential for 4-8 episodes,” says Guzel Yakhina. I think that if this is realized, the film will cause no less interest than the novel.

Used sources

Smirnova N. Guzel Yakhina's brilliant debut. Newspaper "Republic of Tatarstan", November 19, 2015, p.16

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 a kind 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 who 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 this will not be continued, the disappeared mainland. But a rare and joyful event happened - a new prose writer came, a young Tatar woman Guzel Yakhina, and easily joined the ranks of these masters.

The novel "Zuleikha opens her eyes" is a great debut. It has the main quality of real literature - it hits right in the heart. The story about the fate of the main character, a Tatar peasant woman from the time of dispossession, breathes with such authenticity, authenticity and charm, which are not so common in recent decades in a huge stream of modern prose.

The somewhat cinematic style of narration enhances the drama of the action and the brightness of the images, and publicism not only does not destroy the narration, but, on the contrary, turns out to be the dignity 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 registrars of the diseases of the time. The phrase " women's literature” carries 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 masculine: doctors, teachers, scientists, writers. Bad novels during the existence of the genre, men have written hundreds of times more than women, and it is difficult to argue with this fact. The novel by Guzel Yakhina is, without a doubt, feminine. 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 mankind. 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 sincerely congratulate the author on a wonderful premiere, and readers on magnificent prose. This is a brilliant start.

Ludmila Ulitskaya

Part one

wet chicken

One day

Zuleikha opens her eyes. Dark as a cellar. The geese sigh sleepily behind the thin curtain. A month old foal slaps its lips, looking for the mother's udder. Behind the window at the head - the muffled groan of the January snowstorm. But it doesn’t blow from the cracks - thanks to Murtaza, he caulked the windows before the cold. Murtaza is a good host. And a good husband. He snores loudly and juicy on the male half. Sleep tight, before dawn - the deepest sleep.

It's time. Allah Almighty, let me fulfill my plan - let no one wake up.

Zuleikha silently lowers one bare foot to the floor, then the other, leans on the stove and gets up. During the night, she cooled down, the heat left, the cold floor burns her feet. You can’t put on shoes - you won’t be able to walk silently in felt cats, some kind of floorboard and even creak. Nothing, Zuleikha will be patient. Holding his hand on the rough side of the stove, he makes his way to the exit from the female half. It is narrow and cramped here, but she remembers every corner, every ledge - for half a lifetime she slides back and forth, like a pendulum, all day long: from the boiler - to the male half with full and hot bowls, with male half– back with empty and cold.

How many years has she been married? Fifteen of your thirty? This is even more than half of life, probably. It will be necessary to ask Murtaza when he is in the mood - let him calculate.

Do not stumble about the carpet. Do not hit with your bare foot on the forged chest on the right against the wall. Step over the squeaky board at the bend of the furnace. Silently sneak past the chintz charshau that separates the female part of the hut from the male part ... 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 - you have 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 and the bird home. The geese don't move, but the colt thumped his hoof, shook his head, woke up, damn it. It will be a good horse, sensitive. She stretches 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 is heavily fed, 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 it turns out in the passage. He closes the door, leans his back against it.

Praise be to Allah, part of the way has been passed.

It's cold in the hallway, like on the street - it stings the skin, the shirt does not warm. Jets of icy air beat through the cracks in the floor at bare feet. But it's not scary.

Terrible - behind the door opposite.

Ubyrly karchyk- Ghoul. Zuleikha calls her that about herself. Glory to the Almighty, the mother-in-law does not live with them in the same hut. Murtaza's house is spacious, in two huts connected by a common hallway. On the day when the forty-five-year-old Murtaza brought the fifteen-year-old Zuleikha into the house, the Upyrikha herself, with martyr grief on her face, dragged her numerous chests, bales and dishes into the guest hut and occupied it all. "Don't touch!" she shouted menacingly to her son when he tried to help with the move. And I didn't talk to him for two months. In the same year, she began to quickly and hopelessly go blind, and after a while - to become deaf. A couple of years later she was blind and deaf as a stone. But now she talked a lot, do not stop.

No one 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 himself is almost an old man.

The ghoul usually wakes up before anyone else and brings her carefully kept treasure into the canopy - an elegant milk-white porcelain chamber pot with pale blue cornflowers on its 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 stoking the stove, putting the dough and taking the cow to the herd. Woe to her if she oversleep this morning wake-up call. For fifteen years, Zuleikha slept twice - and forbade herself to remember what happened next.

Behind the door is quiet. Come on, Zuleikha, wet chicken, hurry up. wet chicken - zhebegyan tavyk- she was first called by Upyrikha. Zuleikha did not notice how after a while she herself began to call herself that.

She sneaks into the depths of the passage, to the stairs to the attic. Feels for the smoothly hewn railing. The steps are steep, the frozen boards groan a little audibly. From above, it breathes with cold wood, frozen dust, dry herbs and a subtle aroma of salted goose. Zuleikha rises - the sound of a snowstorm is closer, the wind beats against the roof and howls in the corners.

In the attic he decides to crawl on all fours - if you go, the boards will creak right above the head of the sleeping Murtaza. And she crawls by crawling, the weights in her are nothing at all, Murtaza lifts with one hand, like a ram. She pulls her nightgown up to her chest so that it does not get dirty in the dust, twists it, takes the end in her teeth - and gropes her way between the drawers, boxes, wooden tools, gently crawls over the transverse beams. He leans his forehead against the wall. Finally.

Zuleikha is the 30-year-old wife of 60-year-old Murtaza. She is small, thin, with huge green eyes.

Zuleikha was born in a Tatar village in 1900. From childhood, her mother accustomed her to humility, explained how to behave with her elders, with her future husband. At the age of 15, she was married to respectable man. Over the years, Zuleikha gave birth 4 times, and each time her daughter died shortly after birth.

The novel begins with the phrase "Zuleikha opens her eyes" and in the first chapter describes one day of a woman in a village Tatar family.

Zuleikha got up even earlier than usual. Her task was to sneak unnoticed into the attic, where various supplies were stored, including marshmallow. She wanted to steal a piece. For what? It was a sacrifice for the spirit of the outskirts, and the spirit of the outskirts had to ask the spirit of the cemetery to look after the daughters of Zuleikha. Zuleikha could not address the spirit of the cemetery directly: it was out of order. But why did Zuleikha have to steal marshmallows in her own house? Because her husband was the owner of the house, and he would not like that the marshmallow was literally thrown into the wind.

Murtaza, even at the age of 60, is a powerful man. He is tall, overgrown with black hair, looks like a bear. Murtaza is a zealous owner, his house is a full bowl. He treats his wife harshly: he never caresses, for every fault (sluggishness, minor mistakes) he beats. With other people, he is also not too affectionate, and therefore lives on the outskirts. But in the village of Yulbash (translated as "the beginning of the path"), he is considered a good owner.

But why did he get married so late? The fact is that there is a person with whom Murtaza is affectionate and whom she respects immensely - this is his mother.

Mom gave birth to Murtaza late - he is the last. During the great famine, all his sisters died. People say that his mother ate them and fed him. But Murtaza does not believe these rumors: mother swore that they died on their own, and that no graves could be found, so then everyone was buried secretly so that the neighbors would not dig up the corpses, and then they would forget the burial place.

Now he is 60 years old, and she is almost 100. Every day Murtaza comes to his mother, tells her how the day went, seeks her help and support. They live in different huts connected by a passage.

Zuleikha calls her mother-in-law Vampire. The ghoul hates her daughter-in-law. She herself has been blind for a long time, but she knows and controls everything better when she is sighted. Of course, she hasn't done anything around the house for a long time. But Zuleikha is busy from dawn to dusk. The house and cattle are on her, and at night she sleeps on a chest - only one husband fits on the bed. In principle, the wife has her own bed in the female half. But, nothing, Zuleikha is small, thin - she is fine on the chest.

In the morning, you must definitely be in time for the moment when the mother-in-law leaves her room with a chamber pot. Pot - porcelain, with flowers. God forbid not to have time. Twice in 15 years, Zuleikha woke up this moment, and God, what happened!

100 small injections and tricks every day. For example, Ghoul needs to soar in the bath. This in itself is a difficult undertaking. But when they soared, Upyrikha demanded to whip her harder and harder with a broom until blood appeared. And then she presented this wound to her son with tears, that, they say, Zuleikha beat her, poor, on purpose. Murtaza beat his wife.

Another mother-in-law had a prophetic dream (And Vampirekha sometimes saw prophetic dreams, and they all came true). She dreamed that the unworthy daughter-in-law was taken away in a chariot by 3 demons, and she and her son remained at home. The dream means that Zuleikha will die, and Murtaza will find new wife who will bear him a son.

The ghoul despises Zuleikha. She calls her wet chicken and always cites herself as an example. Already in her youth she was both tall and stately, and she would not allow anyone to treat her the way she treats her daughter-in-law, but most importantly, she gave birth to a son, and Zuleikha had only 4 girls in 15 years, and those days have not lived. A ghoul once overtook her future husband on a horse and whipped him with a leg - there is such a game - kyz-kuu - Eastern peoples and she spent three whole days in sacred grove. Zuleikha would immediately die of fear there.

Nevertheless, Zuleikha does not grumble at fate. She believes that she is lucky: she lives in warmth, in satiety, and her husband is strict, but fair.

In the afternoon they went to the forest for firewood. The husband chopped, and Zuleikha dragged bundles to the cart. We loaded the horse to the fullest, so we didn’t get into the sledge, but walked side by side. A blizzard has risen. Zuleikha lagged behind the horse and got lost: she could not understand where to go. After all, she would have froze, and rightly so - she is a useless and stupid person, but her husband found her, brought her home. But he could have quit. See what a good husband he is?

Plus, he's been in trouble lately. Zuleikha overheard Murtaza's conversation with her mother. He cried and said that he could no longer live like this: he was tortured by the Soviet authorities with their food tax. As soon as he grows bread or a cow, they appear and take away. And everyone is raising taxes. What does he work for? His patience has come to an end. His mother strokes his head, says that he is strong, that he will endure everything and defeat his enemies. Murtaza seemed to have calmed down, but not for long. Then he suddenly took out a sausage from a hiding place, which he hid from the commissars, and ate it - he choked, but ate (but he did not give Zuleikha a piece); then he took a piece of sugar and dripped rat poison on it: let the commissar see the sugar, put it in his mouth, and die in agony. Then Murtaza rushed into the barn and killed the cow. Then he decided to go to the cemetery and hide the grain there.

They already did that. The grain was hidden in the coffin of the eldest daughter, who died in 1917. Zuleikha thinks that her daughter is glad to help them.

They buried the grain and drove home, but then they were overtaken by a detachment of Red Army soldiers who had come from the city. The squad leader asked where they were coming from. They said they were from the forest. “And why did you take a shovel with you? Were you looking for a treasure? What are those grains?" Here Murtaza grabbed the ax, and the commissar shot him.

Zuleikha brought the corpse home, put it on the bed, and lay down next to him. The ghoul did not call. In the morning the soldiers came along with the chairman of the collective farm, read out to her an order that she was considered a kulak element and was subject to deportation. She was allowed to take with her only a sheepskin coat. She also took poisoned sugar from the windowsill: she did not want anyone to be poisoned by it.

And upyrikha got out of her hut with peas and began to call Zuleikha, call her a lazy person, threaten to tell her son everything.

The military in a stunned look at all this, and left. So Upyrikha and Murtaza were left alone in the house, and Zuleikha was taken away in a sleigh. The dream came true, but not in the way the mother-in-law thought.

In Kazan, Zuleikha spent the whole of February in a transit prison. It was the same prison where the 1st year student of Kazan University Volodya Ulyanov was imprisoned. Maybe they wouldn’t have imprisoned him for a trifling reason - everything that happened then would not have happened?

Zuleikha was made a widow by Ivan Ignatov. He is also 30 years old. He grew up in Kazan, his mother was a worker, and they lived in the basement. At the age of 18, he enlisted in the Red Army, and fought all the time, fought ... And then his comrade Mishka Bakiyev called him to serve in the GPU in Kazan. He arrived. His work was boring, paper. But Bakiyev sent him to the village for dispossession. It was a completely different matter - still a confrontation with a class enemy.

Ignatov escorted carts with kulak families to Kazan. He was a little ashamed in front of the green-eyed woman because he had shot her husband: she was very frail and clearly could not stand the road to Siberia. With her husband, perhaps, she would have survived, but alone - hardly. But why should he worry about the world-eater, especially since he will take them to Kazan and never see them again? Much more Ignatov was interested in one beauty from his squad. That's a woman, that's a woman! Ignatov was not married, but he met women. They considered him handsome, they themselves offered to move in with them, but he was not ready for this yet.

But in Kazan, Bakiyev gave the order to accompany the dispossessed to their destination. Ignatov tried to refuse - it did not work out. Bakiyev was kind of strange, hugged him, kissed him.

Ignatov went to the station. He became a train commissioner for 1,000 people. Get rid of the right questions. They were supposed to leave on March 30th. I went to say goodbye to Bakiyev, and he was arrested. Is the bear an enemy? Can't be! No, they'll figure it out later, of course, but it's better to leave now. Already in Siberia, Ignatov learned that his friend had been shot, and Bakiyev saved him by sending him by train.

The road to Siberia turned out to be very long. We left on March 30, and arrived at our destination only in mid-August. At first, there were about a thousand people on the train, and 330 people arrived.

The decline was due to disease, malnutrition. The exiles had to be fed at the train stations, but there was usually not enough food for them. On the train, food supplies were designed only for security. But Ignatov once, after the exiles had not eaten for 2 days, gave a ram stored in ice to the head of the station in the form of a bribe, and his people were fed porridge, and even a little meat was put in it.

Plus, there was an escape. The peasants noticed that there was a small gap in the roof of the wagon, shook the boards and fled.

It happened in the carriage where Zuleikha was traveling. On the way, she joined a strange company of intelligent Leningraders. They were: the famous sculptor and artist Ikonnikov, the elderly academician-agronomist Sumlinsky and his wife Isabella Leopoldovna. And on the shelf with Zuleikha was a Kazan doctor, Professor Leibe. Another from Leningrad was the criminal Gorelov, who appointed himself to look after the car and ran to knock on everyone to Ignatov.

Only the history of Leibe is described in detail. The German, who was considered a brilliant surgeon, obstetrician, teacher, could not stand the upheaval of the revolution. Once, in front of his eyes, a woman was shot on the street, whom he successfully performed a complex operation a few months ago. This stunned him, but suddenly a cap seemed to fall on his head, which isolated him from surrounding reality. Then he called this shell an egg. The egg made it so that Leibe could see and hear only what he wanted. He saw that he was living in his old huge apartment, not noticing that he had been evicted to one room, and the neighbors had moved in. He believed that his main keeper was the maid Grunya, who now lived in the apartment as his neighbor, and not as a servant. The long-withered palm tree flourished in his mind. The only thing was that he could no longer operate and teach: for this it was necessary to get out of the egg, but he did not want to.

Grunya, meanwhile, got married and wrote a denunciation on Leyba so that he would be imprisoned, and his room would be given to her. And then the GPU officers came for Leibe, and he was sure that they had sent people to persuade him to give a consultation. So he behaved in prison and during interrogations. They wanted to send him to crazy house, but an order came to form echelons for exile, and from the transit prison everyone with obscure articles was raked onto the train.

The novel "Zuleikha opens her eyes" begins in the winter of 1930 in a remote Tatar village. The peasant woman Zuleikha, along with hundreds of other settlers, is sent in a heating wagon along the eternal hard labor route to Siberia. Dense peasants and Leningrad intellectuals, the declassed element and criminals, Muslims and Christians, pagans and atheists, Russians, Tatars, Germans, Chuvashs - all will meet on the banks of the Angara, daily defending their right to life from the taiga and the ruthless state. Dedicated to all the dispossessed and displaced.

historical drama. The story of life and love of dispossessed settlers in Siberia.

About the author: Guzel Yakhina was born and raised in Kazan, graduated from the faculty foreign languages, studies at the screenwriting department of the Moscow Film School. Published in the magazines "Neva", "Siberian Lights", "October".

Russian critics responded positively to Guzeli Yakhina's debut novel. Olga Breininger compared it in importance with Zakhar Prilepin's Abode.

Discovery of the past year: Guzel Yakhina and her book Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes, awarded the Big Book Prize.

Awards:

2015 "Big Book"

2015 Yasnaya Polyana

Heavy book. Really. Pregnant and highly impressionable is better not to read.

Foreword by Lyudmila Ulitskaya.Love and tenderness in hell:

The somewhat cinematic style of narration enhances the drama of the action and the brightness of the images, and publicism not only does not destroy the narration, but, on the contrary, turns out to be the dignity 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 registrars of the diseases of the time. The phrase "women's literature" carries 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 masculine: doctors, teachers, scientists, writers. During the existence of the genre, bad novels were written hundreds of times more by men than by women, and it is difficult to argue with this fact. Roman Guzel Yakhina - no 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 mankind. 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 sincerely congratulate the author on a wonderful premiere, and readers on magnificent prose. This is a brilliant start.

Ludmila Ulitskaya

Characteristics

Publisher: AST

Book Series: Prose: Feminine

Russian language

Year of publication:2016 (2015)

Number of pages: 508

Illustrations: No illustrations

Format: 84x108/32 (130x200 mm)

Binding: Hard

Paper:Offset

ISBN:978-5-17-090436-5

Weight: 450 gr.

Literature of the countries of the world: Russian literature

Literature by Period:Modern Literature

Angara -river in Eastern Siberia, the largest right tributary of the Yenisei, the only river flowing from Lake Baikal:

Zuleikha opens her eyes. Reviews and reviews:

@131313: Do you know this feeling when you open a book, read the first lines, and feel: "that's it, I'm lost, I'm subdued and I definitely won't be disappointed!"?

"Zuleikha opens her eyes" produced just such an effect on me. Written in beautiful language, Guzel Yakhina's book lives and breathes. It is impossible to tear yourself away from it, it absorbs the reader entirely, takes him prisoner. Probably not everyone will be so delighted with the book, but I have no doubt that very many will like it. For me, it has become one of my favorites.

"Zuleikha opens her eyes" is the story of a small and fragile, but strong and bright woman, who has had so many trials that not everyone can stand, stand and not break. But she did. She not only did not break down, but went through all the sorrows, hardships and losses with dignity, without becoming embittered. She adapted, accepted completely wild, unacceptable and sinful conditions of life for her meekly.

"Zuleikha opens her eyes" is a story of suffering, humiliation, dispossession, repressions, bestial attitude of people towards the same people. The history of the path of one state to a bright socialist future. A path lined with the corpses of innocent people, shattered by hopes, tears, sweat and blood.

Zuleikha opens her eyes and first of all rushes to her tyrannical sparkling, to empty her chamber pot. Before she had time to wake up, swearing, humiliation, and insults were pouring down on her beautiful head. Her husband and mother-in-law do not put a penny on her, they beat her with words and a fist. Zuleikha does not know peace. She is constantly in business, running errands for others. Nobody sees her as a person. A cook, a servant, a husband's bedding, and a vessel into which the mother-in-law pours her spiritual pus and poison.

Zuleikha does not know happiness. She does not know life, real, complete. Does not know affection and warmth, good word. Zuleikha knows only hard work, beatings, insults, round-the-clock service to her husband and mother-in-law. And still, she considers herself lucky that she got a good husband. Everything humbly endures, accepts, does not reread and does not rebel. This is incomprehensible to me. But that's how she is, Zuleikha. Such a person, so brought up.

But this is not all that befell the fragile Tatar. Zuleikha, who in her thirties never left her native village (except for a trip to the forest for firewood and to the cemetery), dreamed of seeing Kazan at least once in her life. And she did. And not only Kazan. Together with hundreds and thousands of others of the same unfortunate - "fist" and "former people" (dear mother ... how terrible, disgusting and inhuman these words are, even just by sight and sound) - Zuleikha will make a long journey through the whole country, to the end of the world. Into the deep taiga They will be taken on trains, in cattle cars. And I will count like cattle - by head, and treat accordingly. After all, they are enemies, anti-Soviet elements, half-humans, subhumans. Months on the road, long, hungry, painful, for someone fatal. And ahead - a frightening unknown.

Vibrant images, captivating and touching storytelling. Scary, very scary.

And it is also silent and the story of my family, for which the word "repression", unfortunately, is not an empty phrase. I read and remembered my grandmother's stories. Also for this reason, it took so much to the soul.

@Tayafenix: Exiled life. That's interesting ... It would seem that all the misadventures of Zuleikha should have begun with dispossession, from the moment she was forced to leave her home, native village, husband, but for me the most terrible part of the novel was precisely the first - the one that tells about her pre-immigrant life. I can't imagine how a woman can have such a kneeling, martyr attitude towards a man. I can’t imagine how to endure such a life and still think that “I got a good husband, because he didn’t leave me in the winter in the forest, although he could - who needs me like that?”. Horror! The whole subsequent stage, the difficult resettlement, survival in a new place, became, probably, not only for Zuleikha in the end something good, but also for me - getting rid of that oppressive feeling with which I read the first part.

All dispossession, transfer, life are shown by Yakhina in large strokes - clearly, clearly, like in a textbook - without screaming, moaning about who is right or wrong, without accusations and bias towards any side, which I really liked - too much lately unhealthy debates on the topic of the USSR, bickering, abuse. Everything is simple for a young writer - it was like that. Such are the people. Such is the fate of people, their thoughts. There are noble ones, there are mean ones, but they are all real and alive with their own ideas and shortcomings.

A sweet eccentric professor who is impossible not to fall in love with, the furious and strict commandant Ignatov, who at the same time has his own principles, the corrupt sycophant Gorelov, and all the other truly living characters, you follow their life and survival with awe, sympathy. At the same time, Yakhina's prose is indeed very feminine - the fates, the feelings of the characters and the woman in the center of the story are more important here, and historical events are only the realities of her fate in which she had to live. Good female prose, revealing the thoughts and feelings of the characters, is soft enough and deep enough.

I also surprisingly liked the language of the writer. To be honest, like many, I am somewhat wary of modern Russian literature - good works meet, but not as often as we would like, so I am especially happy that a young girl who has published her first novel can write so well - heartfelt. It is unlikely that this book will be a bomb or a serious discovery for me, but I spent several exciting and pleasant hours behind it and lived an unusual life for myself.

And finally, I would like to say that it turned out very whole work. While reading, I would like things to be different, for example, in the relationship between Ivan and Zuleikha, but in fact even my romantic nature is pleased that, unlike me, the author’s sense of reality cannot be taken away.

@lizchen: Opening of the year. Book of the year. No more and no less. How much strength, talent, how much understanding of someone else's soul ... Where can I get the words now so that the review at least corresponds to the impact on the reader that I experienced? I would like not to speak, but to be silent, to carefully keep this strength, these feelings in myself, silently empathize with those people who went through hell and did not break, remember their example and be fueled by their will to live, ask their forgiveness, although I myself seem to be nothing to blame.

What is this book anyway? And this is "Abode", only about the Krasnoyarsk taiga instead of Solovki, written by a woman's hand and passed through female heart. Instead of bitterness - love, albeit broken and "wrong". The history of exiled settlers: dispossessed from the villages, St. Petersburg intellectuals, and later those who were resettled by entire nations. Nineteen nationalities in one tiny village in the Angara Urman, and the core of the novel is Zuleikha, a small and fragile Tatar woman whose hell began long before this village. Yes, you can’t just argue with Ulitskaya’s word “hell” on the cover, it’s the only possible definition here ...

Hell. Solid, incessant female and human hell. Don't fiddle with frying pans, but usual life Tatar wife. Yes, a book about terrible tragedy Soviet times, but the hopeless daily domestic hard labor taken for granted, perhaps, allowed Zuleikha to survive later, in the taiga. Hell only lasted, starting in the husband's house, continuing for nine months in crowded with people a caravan, burning the Angara with ice water, eating it alive with taiga midges, frost, hunger. So hungry that ... no, you better read for yourself ...

Hell enveloped not only the very fact of bodily and mental suffering, it rolled a woman with a terrible - a violation of the unshakable order of things prescribed by faith, traditions and the general way of life. How to imagine the feelings of someone who has a second without a covered head is a terrible sin, and who got months in that car, with a hole in the floor instead of a toilet, who even had to give birth to a child in public.

But even in inhuman conditions, hell receded when it clashed with love. Impossible, strange, complicating life and tormenting with shame and guilt, but love! And also - no words, just read it yourself. Read to all who value strong and truthful books. Read for those who firmly believe in an exclusively Ukrainian famine and brush aside the famines of Russian, Tatar, Mordovian and all the rest. To read to those who justify the means by the end, to read and explain to those who think differently, why is this all?

These persons had many names, one more incomprehensible and more terrible than the other: the grain monopoly, the surplus appraisal, the requisition, the tax in kind, the Bolsheviks, the food detachments, the Red Army, the Soviet government, the GubChK, the Komsomol members, the GPU, the communists, the authorized ...

Read ... There are many stories, not just one Zuleikha. Stories of obedience, meanness, nobility, true intelligence, ambiguous personality... Believe Ulitskaya's introduction this time, every word she says about this book and its author is true.

@nad1204: This book did not come as a shock to me, this is exactly the kind of novel I should have received.

Terrible book. And at the same time, beautiful.

Terrible in terms of the death of people, injustice, crimes against its own people.

And beautiful, because the young writer Guzel Yakhina succeeded in her "Zuleikha ..." And how!

They are very different, these migrants. And simple hard workers, and peasants, and creative and scientific intelligentsia, but they survived, did not break down and were able to remain people.

An amazing book. Of those that you read all night, and then you still can’t fall asleep - you remember, think, worry ...

I highly recommend!

@celine: I finished the book just a few minutes ago and still can't take a breath. This book can really be called the "Discovery of the Year", from modern Russian-language prose this is the most powerful work that I have read recently. It's very strong. It's very scary. And it's very talented. I have only one complaint with the author: why is this (I hope so far) the only book written by you?

@ANN_MINSK: Many perceive art book as entertainment, pastime, they are less likely to seek solace in it, similar problems, even less often - answers to their life questions. But a book is not a “yummy”, not a “chewing gum” for the brain, and not even a band-aid for a sick heart. Good book- this is a storm of emotions, empathy, someone else's pain and passion that you pass through your heart, and from this your life is filled with new meaning.

The novel is amazingly written. About a difficult time, about the damned twentieth century, about people who got into the meat grinder of dispossession, resettlement, hunger and survival. The main characters, of course, will endure everything (that's why they are the main characters), but how talented, rare, successful strokes the destinies and characters are written, that you don’t doubt the reality and possibility of the plot for a second.

After reading the novel, I even began to look on the map for a village 100 km from the mouth of the Angara, the place of its confluence with the Yenisei, the village of Semruk, Severo-Yenisei district, Krasnoyarsk Territory. And although I didn’t find the same one, but, for example, the village of Maklakovo, mentioned in the novel, exists. There are similar villages founded in the 1930s… What beautiful and romantic places that are now shown on the Internet, and how hard it was for people to get them.

And what helped to live and survive? Ability to adapt, patience, faith in higher power, Love? What? Yes all! And most importantly - the strength of the spirit, which blows from every page of the novel, which you recharge and which you really want to match, if anything .... God forbid ...

The last phrase of the novel does not allow closing the book: "And she will feel that the pain that filled the world has not gone away, but has let her inhale." She sat for a long time, thinking, the author involuntarily thought: "I gave love to help her inhale"...

@Sergey Belyakov: The life of a Tatar peasant woman in the thirties of the last century will seem unbearably hard to the Russian reader. Closed world, rigid separation of male and female roles complete obedience to her husband. The husband is given by the Almighty to guide, feed, protect. Thin thirty-year-old Zuleikha resembles a teenage girl. Her day is like thousands of others: emptying and rinsing her mother-in-law's chamber pot, feeding the cattle, kneading the dough, clearing snow from the paths in the yard. Then she and her husband will go to the forest for firewood. There she will lift and drag heavy logs with him. In the evening - housework. Now I would like to sleep, but the mother-in-law suddenly decided to take a bath. It is necessary to carry water, heat it, heat a bathhouse, prepare brooms, herbs, clean linen. Undress the mother-in-law, soar, wash, dress again. Then wash her husband, wash clothes, wash the floor in the bathhouse, while the mother-in-law constantly calls her "small", "liquid-blooded", "lazy", "loafer", "pretender", which, unfortunately, went to her "dear boy" ( the boy is sixty. And the son agrees with her and beats his wife. And only then - the performance of marital duties. “I got a good husband,” Zuleikha thinks, “he doesn’t beat for long, he cools down quickly.”

Pushkin's "superstitious omens agree with the feelings of the soul" is universal. Zuleikha's conversations with spirits (domestic, rural, forest) reveal her naive, trusting, pure soul. The spirit is not easy to please. Bichura, who lives in the entrance hall, is unpretentious: put unwashed dishes on her - and that's enough. Bath bicura prefers nuts and seeds. Basu kapka iyase (the spirit of the outskirts) loves sweets. Zuleikha already brought him nuts in honey and kosh-tel (a delicacy made from flour and sugar). Now she brought apple marshmallow (she climbed into the attic for it, secretly from her husband and mother-in-law). Will you like it? The wind carried the pieces of marshmallow into the field, they did not return. So, accepted. Now she asks the spirit to speak to the zirat iyase (cemetery spirit). She herself does not dare to turn to him. Let the spirit of the outskirts in its own way ask the spirit of the cemetery to take care of the graves of her daughters, Shamsia, Firuza, Himiza and Sabida. Let him drive away the evil, mischievous shurales and cover the graves with warm snow.

The novel is written in Russian, but includes many Tatar words and expressions. They have an explanatory dictionary. They denote household items, clothes, mythological creatures. This not only creates a national flavor, but also enables readers to compare, evaluate the difficulty of translation, and see the superiority of the original. Zuleikha calls her mother-in-law "Vampire", "witch" ("Ubyrly karchik") behind her eyes. In my opinion, in Tatar it sounds more expressive, meaner, tougher.

Strong, domineering. This Vampire was in her youth. In the equestrian game Kyz-kuu (catch up with the girl), no one could beat her. And at her 100 years old, she continues to enjoy life. Unlike many heroes who disappear to nowhere, Upyrikha continues to play a significant role in the plot. Appears in dreams and visions of Zuleikha. Threatens with a finger, predicting misfortune. And the dreams of the Upyrikha herself always turn out to be prophetic: “the air, black as soot, people swam in it, as in water, and slowly dissolved” (about the famine of 1921).

Zuleikha's husband, Murtaza, is a good host. His house is strong, for two huts. Even now, after the surplus appraisal, confiscations, requisitions, there is still grain, meat, homemade sausage left. There is a cow, horse, foal, poultry. But this too will soon be taken away, driven into the "kalhus" (collective farm). In the rich Tatar village of Yulbash, no one supports collectivization. It is even more alien here than in the Russian village.

“Dispossession of kulaks” begins, or rather, robbery, and then deportation, first to a transit house in Kazan, and then in a train across the country to the Angara. Separate episodes of this difficult journey are described with varying degrees of historical authenticity and artistic persuasiveness.

@Galina Yuzefovich: Reading how Zuleikha strokes the nose of a one and a half month old foal, you immediately feel the roughness of her palm, and the velvety of a horse's skin, and the warm smell emanating from the animal. If she is cold, you reflexively hide your legs under the blanket. Afraid - looking over your shoulder. ... Each individual episode is fraught with the germ of a miracle.

@Maya Kucherskaya: Marina Tsvetaeva once dropped: "All poems are written for the sake of the last line." Guzeli Yakhina's book seems to have been written for the sake of the first chapter. Amazing. “One day” - this is how, very literary, it is called and describes the day of Zuleikha, a thirty-year-old resident of a Tatar village, the wife of a “good host” and a “good husband” Murtaza. This day is overflowing with animal fear, hard work, pain, pleasing a formidable husband and a mother-in-law ruthless to her daughter-in-law, mortal fatigue and the inability to rest. First you need to secretly steal marshmallows from home stocks, then go with your husband to the forest for firewood, in a short pause after dinner, sacrifice marshmallows to the spirit of the outskirts, so that he begs the spirit of the cemetery to take care of Zuleikha's daughters lying there, then, already half-dead, heat the bathhouse, wash the mother-in-law, accept beatings from the husband, please the husband. The gamut of Zuleikha's experiences is played out by the author flawlessly - precisely, simply, to the last molecule of every physical sensation. Here, for example, a morning meeting with a foal: “The horse will be good, sensitive. She stretches her hand through the curtain, touches the velvet muzzle: calm down, yours. He gratefully puffs his nostrils into the palm - 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 is heavily fed, a sharp frosty cloud flies in through the crack "... Guzeli Yakhina's novel is an accomplished professional prose, with a well-structured composition, subtlety in conveying the color of the sky over the taiga, and the baby's breath, a considerable number of strong scenes .

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

The somewhat cinematic style of narration enhances the drama of the action and the brightness of the images, and publicism not only does not destroy the narration, but, on the contrary, turns out to be the dignity 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 registrars of the diseases of the time. The phrase "women's literature" carries 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 masculine: doctors, teachers, scientists, writers. During the existence of the genre, bad novels were written hundreds of times more by men than by women, and it is difficult to argue with this fact. The novel by Guzel Yakhina is, without a doubt, feminine. 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 mankind. 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 sincerely congratulate the author on a wonderful premiere, and readers on magnificent prose. This is a brilliant start.

Ludmila Ulitskaya

Part one
wet chicken

One day

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

It's time. Allah Almighty, let me fulfill my plan - let no one wake up.

Zuleikha silently lowers one bare foot to the floor, then the other, leans on the stove and gets up. During the night, she cooled down, the heat left, the cold floor burns her feet. You can’t put on shoes - you won’t be able to walk silently in felt cats, some kind of floorboard and even creak. Nothing, Zuleikha will be patient. Holding his hand on the rough side of the stove, he makes his way to the exit from the female half. It is narrow and cramped here, but she remembers every corner, every ledge - for half a lifetime she slides back and forth like a pendulum, all day long: from the boiler - to the male half with full and hot bowls, from the male half - back with empty and cold ones.

How many years has she been married? Fifteen of your thirty? This is even more than half of life, probably. It will be necessary to ask Murtaza when he is in the mood - let him calculate.

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 - you have to.

Praise be to Allah, part of the way has been passed.

It's cold in the hallway, like on the street - it stings the skin, the shirt does not warm. Jets of icy air beat through the cracks in the floor at bare feet. But it's not scary.

Terrible - behind the door opposite.

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

He gets up and looks out the little attic window. In the dark gray pre-morning haze, the houses of his native Yulbash, covered with snow, are barely visible. Murtaza once thought - more than a hundred yards turned out. Big village, what to say. The village road, smoothly curving, flows like a river over the horizon. In some places the windows were already lit up in the houses. Rather, Zuleikha.

She stands up and reaches up. Something heavy, smooth, large-bumpy - a salted goose lies in the palm of your hand. The stomach immediately shudders, growls demandingly. No, you can't take a goose. Releases the carcass, looking further. Here! To the left of the attic window hang large and heavy panels, hardened in the cold, from which a barely audible fruity scent emanates. Apple pastille. Thoroughly boiled in the oven, carefully rolled out on wide boards, carefully dried on the roof, soaking up the hot August sun and cool September winds. You can bite off a little bit and dissolve for a long time, rolling a rough sour piece across the palate, or you can fill your mouth and chew, chew the elastic mass, spitting grains that occasionally come across into your palm ... The mouth is instantly flooded with saliva.

Zuleikha plucks a couple of sheets from the rope, twists them tightly and puts them under her arm. He runs his hand over the rest - a lot, a lot more left. Murtaza should not guess.

And now back.

She kneels and crawls towards the stairs. A scroll of marshmallow prevents you from moving quickly. Indeed, a wet chicken did not think of taking any sack with her. He descends the stairs slowly: he does not feel his legs - he is numb, he has to put his numb feet sideways, on the edge. When he reaches the last step, the door on the side of the Upyrikha swings open with noise, and a light, barely distinguishable silhouette appears in the black opening. A heavy stick hits the floor.

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

Zuleikha freezes. The heart groans, the stomach is compressed by an ice lump. I didn’t have time ... The marshmallow under my arm thaws, softens.

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

Zuleikha flies up a couple of steps, holding the soft marshmallow tighter with her elbow.

The old woman moves her chin from one side to the other. He doesn’t hear anything, he doesn’t see anything, but he feels, the old witch. One word - Vampire. Kluka knocks loudly - closer, closer. Eh, wake up Murtaza ...

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

The white silhouette stops at the foot of the stairs. You can hear the old woman sniffing, noisily drawing in air through her nostrils. Zuleikha raises her palms to her face - that's right, they smell of goose and apples. Suddenly the Upyriha makes a deft lunge forward and backhand hits the steps of the stairs with a long stick, as if cutting them in half with a sword. The end of the stick whistles somewhere very close and pierces with a ringing sound into the board in the half-finger from Zuleikha's bare foot. The body weakens, the dough spreads over the steps. If the old witch strikes again... The ghoul mutters something unintelligible, pulls her stick towards her. The chamber pot clanks dully in the dark.

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

This is how the morning usually starts in the house.

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

- Zuleikha-ah!

And now - it's time. The mother-in-law does not like to repeat the third time. Zuleikha jumps up to Upyrikha - "I'm flying, I'm flying, mom!" - and takes from her hands a heavy pot covered with warm, sticky perspiration, as he does every day.

“A wet chicken has come,” she grumbles. - Only sleep and much, lazy ...

Murtaza must have woken up from the noise, he might go out into the hallway. Zuleikha clutches a marshmallow under her arm (wouldn't lose it on the street!), gropes for someone's felt boots on the floor with her feet and jumps out into the street. The blizzard beats in the chest, takes it in a tight fist, trying to rip it off. The shirt rises like a bell. The porch turned into a snowdrift overnight, - Zuleikha goes down, barely guessing the steps with her feet. Falling almost to the knee, he wanders to the latrine. Struggles with the door, opening it against the wind. Throws the contents of the pot into the icy hole. When he returns to the house, the Upyrikha is no longer there - she has gone to her place.

On the threshold he meets a sleepy Murtaza, in his hand is a kerosene lamp. The bushy eyebrows are drawn to the bridge of the nose, the wrinkles on the wrinkled cheeks from sleep are deep, as if cut with a knife.

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

- I just took out my mother's pot - and back ...

- Do you want to lie down sick again half the winter? And dump the whole house on me?

- What are you, Murtaza! I didn't freeze at all. Look! - Zuleikha stretches forward her bright red palms, tightly pressing her elbows to her belt, - marshmallow bulges under her arm. Is it visible under the shirt? The fabric is wet in the snow, sticks to the body.

But Murtaza is angry, he does not even look at her. He spits to the side, strokes his shaved skull with his outstretched palm, combs his disheveled beard.

- Let's eat. And clear the yard - get ready. Let's go for wood.

Zuleikha nods low and darts behind the charshau.

Happened! She did it! Oh yes Zuleikha, oh yes wet chicken! Here it is, the prey: two crumpled, twisted, sticky rags of the most delicious marshmallow. Can you deliver today? And where is this wealth to hide? You can’t leave them at home: in their absence, Upyrikha delves into things. Have to carry with you. Dangerous, of course. But today, Allah seems to be on her side - should be lucky.

Zuleikha tightly wraps the marshmallow in a long rag and wraps it around her waist. He lowers his undershirt from above, puts on a kulmak, trousers. Weaves braids, throws on a scarf.

The dense twilight behind the window at the head of her bed becomes thinner, diluted with the stunted light of an overcast winter morning. Zuleikha throws back the curtains - everything is better than working in the dark. A kerosene stove, standing on the corner of the stove, throws a little oblique light on the female half, but the economical Murtaza twisted the wick so low that the light was almost invisible. It's not scary, she could do everything blindfolded.

A new day begins.

Even before noon, the morning blizzard subsided, and the sun peeped through the bright blue sky. We went for firewood.

Zuleikha sits on the back of the sleigh with her back to Murtaza and looks at Yulbash's retreating houses. Green, yellow, dark blue, they look like bright mushrooms from under the snowdrifts. Tall white candles of smoke melt into the sky blue. Snow crunches loudly and deliciously under the runners. Occasionally snorts and shakes her mane, cheerful in the cold Sandugach. The old sheepskin under Zuleikha warms. And on the stomach, the cherished rag warms up - it also warms. Today, if only to have time to bring today ...

Hands and back ache - at night there was a lot of snow, and Zuleikha for a long time dug into the snowdrifts with a shovel, clearing wide paths in the yard: from the porch - to the large barn, to the small one, to the outhouse, to the winter barn, to the backyard. After work, it’s so nice to sit back on a sleigh swaying evenly - sit back, wrap yourself deeper in a fragrant sheepskin coat, put your numb palms into your sleeves, put 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 pines. 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 on felt boots, jumps off the sleigh, throws a gun on his back, tucks a large ax into his belt. He takes sticks in his hands and, without looking back, confidently trails the path into the thicket. Zuleikha is next.

The forest near Yulbash is good and rich. In the summer, she feeds the villagers with large strawberries and sweet granular raspberries, in the fall - with odorous mushrooms. Lots of game. Chishme flows from the depths of the forest - usually gentle, shallow, full of fast fish and clumsy crayfish, and in spring it is swift, grumbling, swollen with melted snow and mud. During the Great Famine, only they saved - the forest and the river. Well, God bless, 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 bright 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 - the dense urman began, the windbreak thicket, the abode of wild animals, forest spirits and all kinds of evil spirits. Centuries-old black spruces with sharp spear-like tops grew in Urman so often that a horse could not get through. And the light trees - red pines, speckled birches, gray oaks - were not there at all.

They said that through the urman you can reach the lands of the Mari - if you go from the sun for many days in a row. What kind of person in their right mind would do such a thing? 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 oaks, dug up mouse holes in search of grain - they did not go to urman. And those who walked - they were no longer seen.

Zuleikha stops for a moment, puts a large basket for brushwood on the snow. He looks around uneasily - after all, Murtaza drove so far in vain.

– How far is it, Murtaza? I can no longer see Sandugach through the trees.

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

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

The blade gleams in the sun and enters the birch side with a short booming “chah”. "Oh! Oh!" echo echoes. The ax cuts off the thick bark, intricately painted with black bumps, then pierces into the soft pink wood pulp. Chips splatter like tears. Echo fills the forest.

“And you can hear it in Urman,” Zuleikha thinks anxiously. She stands a little further away, up to her waist in the snow, clasping the basket, and watches how Murtaza cuts. Far away, with a pull, he swings, elastically bends the camp and accurately throws the ax into a splintered white crack on the side of the tree. Strong man, big. And it works well. Good husband she got it, it's a sin to complain. She herself is small, barely reaches Murtaza up to the shoulder.

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

The husband, saddling a conquered tree, cuts off thick branches from it. Wife - breaks off thin ones and collects them in a basket along with brushwood. They work for a long time, silently. The lower back hurts, the shoulders are filled with fatigue. Hands, albeit in mittens, freeze.

- Murtaza, is it true that your mother, in her youth, went to urman for several days and returned intact? - Zuleikha straightens her back and arches at the waist, resting. - The abystai told me, and her grandmother told her.

He does not answer, trying on with an ax to a crooked knotted branch sticking out of the trunk.

“I would die of fear if I were there. I'd probably lose my legs right there. She would lie on the ground, close her eyes - and pray without ceasing, while her tongue moves.

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

– But, they say, prayers do not work in Urman. Pray - do not pray, all the same - you will perish ... What do you think ... - Zuleikha lowers her voice: - ... are there places on earth where the gaze of Allah does not penetrate?

Murtaza swings widely and drives the ax deeply into the log ringing in the cold. He takes off the malachai, wipes the reddened, glowing naked skull with his palm and spits relishfully at his feet.

They are back to work.

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

Didn't notice how dark it was. When Zuleikha raises her eyes to the sky, the sun is already hidden behind ragged tufts of clouds. A strong wind blows, the snow blows and whistles.

- Let's go home, Murtaza, the blizzard 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 to the logs: first we drag them. Four logs in the stumps of former branches, each one is longer than Zuleikha. Murtaza, grunting, tears off one end of the thickest log from the ground. Zuleikha takes the second one. It’s impossible to lift it right away, it swarms for a long time, adjusting to a thick and rough tree.

- Come on! Murtaza screams impatiently. - Woman!

Finally managed. Embracing the log with both hands, pressing her chest against the pinkish whiteness of a fresh tree, bared with long sharp splinters. Moving towards the sled. They go slowly. The hands are shaky. If only not to drop, Almighty, if only not to drop. If you fall on your foot, you will remain a cripple for life. It gets hot - hot streams flow down the back, stomach. The cherished rag under the breast gets wet through - the marshmallow will give salt. It's nothing, just to have time to take it today ...

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

When they dragged the log onto the sled, Zuleikha falls beside her, takes off her mittens, loosens the scarf around her neck. It hurts to breathe, as if she was running without stopping through the whole village.