rules_nodejs may provide some way of specifying a local node installation, but I do not know if you’ll run into further issues. I’m afraid the writing has been on the wall for 32 bit for some time - Qt and orjson already did not provide 32 bit Linux builds, and with Bazel not providing them either, it is hard to justify spending engineering effort trying to keep a dying platform working when the upstream tools have already decided against it.
(of course, you should be able to continue to use 2.1.35 on that machine for the foreseeable future)