The wind outside was loud, beating against my window like a trapped bird. And fog. Everywhere. Hanging in thick bundles, pushing me into the downy abyss of my bed.
And then, far away, the sound of a harp, its strings plucked in sobbing arpeggios seeming to come out of the wind, followed by a slow procession of strings. The music grew louder, swelling into the full orchestral despondency of Gustav Mahler’s “Adagietto.” I lay listening as the first violins painted a summer sunset; the violas sang the last autumn song of a skylark; the cellos drifted away with the spinning snow; then all the voices joined in spring’s bittersweet harmonies—eternal and ephemeral. I cried and smiled at the same time. The music passed on, its echoes fading away. I slept.
I woke to silence, the ghostly silence when you feel like you’re the last living soul left on earth. My head felt heavy as lead, while the rest of my body was weightless, floating on the smooth waves of my bed. Both windows in my room were draped, leaving me a prisoner of darkness. And of smell. A repulsive smell clogged the air. Where did it come from? I had to get away.
I stole out of bed. Too fast. The room spun around me. I held on to the wall, waiting for the spin to die out. The mirror next to my wardrobe was covered with white fabric. And so was the other mirror, hung over my piano. I thought of a custom to cover mirrors in the house of mourning. Did someone die?
I started toward the hallway, unsteady, clutching the wall, sliding my bare feet in short thrusts across the floor. My skin was numb; my bones crunched and ached. A light loomed ahead, scattering yellow spiders across the hallway. I pushed myself forward.
The living room was mobbed. People everywhere, lumped in groups, their lips moving but making no sound. At the sight of me, as if by command, everyone stepped aside, clearing my way to the center of the room.
There, on the dinner table, lay Papa. Asleep, dressed in his only formal black suit—the one he always refused to wear.
You have my permission to bury me in this suit. That’ll be the only time I wear it—for my funeral. I could hear Papa cracking his joke, right in my ear, the familiar tobacco breath brushing against my nostrils.
Then why was he wearing it now? And why was he sleeping on the table, enclosed in ice and flowers? Surrounded by the fumes of that terrible odor. And watched by an audience all dressed in black?
“Papa!” I screamed, throwing myself toward him, anxious to reach him before this dark crowd could stop me from waking him up. But a single step was all I could manage before plunging to the floor.
“Papa,” I muttered, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Papa…”
Someone lifted me. Uncle Kerim, his lips clenched tight. I had never seen him before without a smile. I leaned my head on his shoulder.
“Give her another Demerol,” I heard him say.
Nurse Margo’s face came close, her red, puffed-up eyes blinking rapidly. A bee sting on my arm.
“Papa, I’m sorry. Please forgive me, Papa.”
Could he hear me?
Mama sat alongside him, a small porcelain figure buried in the folds of a mourning dress, a scarf tied so tightly around her face and neck that it seemed to drain any vitality from her cheeks. They were as ashen as the wall behind her. Eyes closed, she was rocking slowly from side to side, her hand stroking the black silk on the table, back and forth, as if ousting wrinkles from Papa’s resting sheet.
Did she hate me? Did she blame me for Papa’s death? Of course she did. Just like everyone else must. Blame hovered in the air as strongly as the odor of formaldehyde. It was my life Papa had saved by sacrificing his own.
“Papa, I’m sorry. Please forgive me, Papa,” I kept saying, over and over, the words that would be carved into my heart for the rest of my life.
• • •
By the time we reached the cemetery, the sky had cowered behind the angry face of a rainstorm. What started as a drizzle quickly intensified into a relentless shower.
Mama walked on my right, her shoulders squared, her face withdrawn.
“It’s good the rain waited until Mekhti Rashidovich was inside the coffin,” sobbed Nurse Margo, squeezing my hand.
That’s what I thought too. How horrible it would have been if it had poured while Papa was carried a few blocks in an open coffin, followed by a large crowd to the waiting catafalque. Getting wet before being buried under the ground. Did Papa feel anything?
A gust of wind slapped me in the face and continued whipping through the Alley of Honor memorial park, lifting into the air anything that wasn’t rooted in the ground—batches of loose soil, broken twigs. Someone’s purple shawl quivered against the gray sky. How much grayer could the sky even get?
A group of drunken gravediggers in high rubber boots lingered in the distance, leaning against their weapons, smoking, impatient to wrap up their job. If I had only stayed at the party instead of wandering the dark streets, they wouldn’t be burying Papa with their rusty shovels.
And I wouldn’t have known.
Almaz, that witch, pretending to look innocent, joined a group of female mourners performing a traditional mourning ritual—tearing her hair, beating her chest with her fists, lamenting loudly. Miserable, wicked ifrite. How dare she come here? Had she no shame left at all? She had always been jealous of me, of my family. And that’s why she stole my papa—to take my place, to become more important to him than me.
“What if you were me and I were you? Then it would be me living upstairs in your fancy quarters, and you’d be right here—in my place—under the stairs.”
A cobra who spit her malignant venom into Papa’s heart. A traitor who dropped me as a sister so she could spend time with Papa and put a curse on him. The curse of her beauty. Oh, how I wanted to scratch out those heinous hyena eyes, to see her bleed to death, twisting her whoring body in her epileptic convulsions. She should have been inside that coffin. Eaten by worms. Instead of Papa.
When did it all start? When? Was it two years ago when we went to the Black Sea? Mama couldn’t go, and Papa offered to take Almaz with us so I would have a friend to play with. One morning we were supposed to tour the Swallow’s Nest Castle. Almaz said that she wasn’t feeling well, and Papa sent me alone with the tourist group. When I came back, Papa seemed annoyed and edgy, even snapped at me for buying two blue shells for fifty kopeks. He made me so mad that I threw the shells out the window. Was it then and there that it started?
But why did Papa yield to her spell? Did she really make him love her more than he loved me?
Excruciating pain stabbed through my head. I touched the bandage. No, it wasn’t physical pain. It was the realization that, ever since that doomed evening of Mama’s birthday, Almaz and I had been knotted together again. This time as the keepers of a dirty secret protecting Mama’s heart and Papa’s reputation. With me alone absorbing the blame. And it made me hate her even more.
“Very well-attended funeral,” I heard Farhad’s voice behind me. “Honorable Mekhti Rashidovich would be proud to know that the love, encouragement, and inspiration he gave to all of us would carry his good name beyond his tragic death.”
Farhad had arrived yesterday morning, on a short leave from the KGB Higher School in Moscow, where he had been accepted into a three-year program. Along with my parents’ closest friends—Uncle Kerim, Uncle Anatoly, and Uncle Zohrab—Farhad worked tirelessly: dealing with the bureaucracy of the morgue and with the proceedings at the cemetery; ordering and picking up flower wreaths; organizing and welcoming crowds of visitors. His presence disturbed me, and his active participation in the arduous business of arranging a funeral made me feel cornered. He hovered over Mama like a doting son-in-law, trying to fill in the missing male presence in our Papa-less family. And Mama, who hadn’t shown much delight at the prospects of our betrothal, now seemed to succumb to Farhad’s efforts.
The whole upper crust of the Azerbaijani Communist oligarchy was in attendance at the Alley of Honor, grouped around the plot for Papa’s burial located next to the tall, granite monument with the portraits of his parents.
A sudden buzz in the crowd. Headlights turned on the brightest high beams, a black ZIL limousine—the official carriage of the Nomenklatura—traveled toward us along a path too narrow to accommodate its obese body, causing the chauffeur to drive over graves bordering the path.
“Is this the First Secretary of the Party himself?” A wave of awe spread through the crowd.
The Chairman of the Council of Ministers emerged from the car, a young member of his entourage holding an umbrella over his head. The Chairman made his way toward us, his face somber, his lips pressed tightly. He vigorously shook Mama’s hand, patted me playfully on the cheek, turned to the crowd, and said loudly: “It’s your turn—the young Soviet generation’s turn—to carry on the torch of Communism.”
He walked to the podium and began his eulogy, the wind and rain restraining his voice, only brief snatches of his monologue reaching my ears: “…Soviet Azerbaijan…under the guidance of our government…many sacrifices…beloved country…dedication to the morals of Communism…My hard work on behalf…”
Why was he giving propaganda rhetoric at Papa’s funeral? Why did he turn our tragedy into a self-promoting spectacle? And why did Mama gaze at the speaker with admiration, nodding her head in agreement with his empty words? Just like everyone else in the crowd.
Except for Tahir. He hid at the very end of the burial plot, leaning against a white poplar tree that fearlessly held its skinny branches up against the blasts of the roaring wind. I am here for you, I felt him say.
• • •
Upon returning from the cemetery, our family and our closest friends gathered in the courtyard at the same tables where—just two days earlier—we’d celebrated Mama’s birthday. Nothing seemed to have changed. These were the same faces, except for Almaz—she wasn’t there. The same dishes cooked and served by Aunty Zeinab. The same flowers spread around the courtyard, their fragrance futile against the odor of formaldehyde.
“My condolences, worthy Sonia Khanum, on the passing of your asshole husband.” The insult sliced through our gathering like a dagger.
Everyone stopped talking, chewing, breathing. A deadly silence took over the courtyard, all heads tilted up, all eyes glued to Chingiz.
He leaned over the balustrade of the third-floor balcony, his cow eyes glistening, his gold-tooth mouth twisted in a drunken sneer, slurring and weeping at the same time. “Look at you. You’re all there, sitting there, speaking there. All respectful. Saying all these nice things—he did this and he did that. But no one says that he was a dirty haramzade. A pedophile. And a thief.”
Uncle Ali appeared behind Chingiz, hitting him, trying to pull him back inside their apartment. “Don’t listen to him,” he cried. “You good people all know that the boy is not well in his head. Just like his mother. You all remember her, my poor niece, how sick she was, don’t you? Please! Good, worthy people! Don’t listen to his jabber. He’s not only cuckoo and beyinsiz, but he’s had too much vodka and opium. He’s drunk and weak in the head. Forgive him good people.”
“Sikdir!” Chingiz swore and pushed his uncle off. “I know what I’m saying. I saw it with my own two—” He forked his eyes with his fingers, then turned the fingers on the crowd. “You.” He pointed toward Papa’s friends assembled in the right side of the courtyard. “I saw all of you. I gave my buddy anasa to smoke; he let me watch. My buddy works at the Turkish baths on Dzerzhinsky Street.
“Don’t you good people know it’s not just baths but fahisexana, a whorehouse for important men like Mekhti Rashidovich? I watched how they atdirmaq my Almaz. Her and other girls. They would atdirmaq them, then use them as their urinals. Perverts.” Chingiz bent over the railing and spat down at our gathering.
“Let’s get him, the lying son of a bitch.” Farhad threw his chair aside and rushed upstairs followed by several other men.
Everyone tried to sneak a glance at Mama, to see her reaction. There was none. She kept digging her fork into dushbara, dumplings, her eyes downcast.
“And you, my future mother-in-law Zeinab,” Chingiz howled. “How much did you pay my uncle so I would marry your dishonored daughter?”
The sound of a blast shook the courtyard.
Aunty Zeinab’s copper tray had crashed onto the stone floor, her plov spilling around. She didn’t move, her mighty arms hanging helplessly, her crimson face frozen in pain.
“I loved your Almaz,” Chingiz whimpered. “I loved her before he made her a whore. Allahu Akbar, the bastard got what he deserved, smashed like a pea.”
The men reached the third floor and grabbed Chingiz, beating him fiercely and dragging him inside Uncle Ali’s apartment. He didn’t resist, just cursed, wailed, and cried his drunken tears. Soon the police arrived, and Chingiz was heaved away, his face bloated beyond recognition, his torn lower lip hanging like a crab leg.
Papa’s wake resumed with everyone trying to act as if nothing had happened, shedding tears, hugging Mama and me, offering long praising toasts in Papa’s remembrance. Uncle Kerim even made a clumsy attempt to tailor one of his toasts to the incident when he said, “The best memory is that which forgets nothing but injuries. Write goodness in marble and write injuries in the dust.”
But nothing could change what had happened. A knife wound heals, but a tongue wound festers.
Ayib was out. The shame had been revealed.
• • •
The next morning I woke to the screeching of car brakes followed by the slam of the doors. A gray GAZ-2424 Volga van was parked beneath my balcony. Two men in white aprons rolled out a stretcher. I grabbed my shawl and ran downstairs.
Uncle Zohrab stood at the entrance to his apartment, his feeble body swaying, banging his head mercilessly against the wall, wailing: “Al-laa-hum-magh-fir li-hay-yi-naa wa may-yiti-naa wa shaa-hi-di-naa…”
“What happened?” I asked, terrified.
“She took her own life.” Uncle Zohrab sobbed, covering his face with his hands. “My sweet gül, my Zeinab… She hung herself…quietly…while we were asleep… She hung herself in the kitchen. My beloved Zeinab. Allah, give wings to her soul…”
Then I saw Almaz. She lay huddled on the floor in the corner, shaking as violently as if a thousand volts of lightning poured through her body. The pallid irises burst out of her eyes. Her mouth salivated, chewing on air. An epileptic seizure.
“Uncle Zohrab,” I shouted. “Help!”
“Let her die. Let the fahise die.” He hit his head with his fists. “Oh, my Zeinab, my sweet gül, why did you do this to yourself? Why did you leave me in shame?”
Almaz struggled to breathe, foam forming at her mouth. Her clenched fingers pulled at the collar of her nightgown. A rasping sound rattled through her throat. Her head bounced against the hard floor.
I dithered, torn between the wish for Almaz to die an agonizing death and a fear of losing my only sister.
Fear won.
I knelt beside her, placed the palm of my hand between her head and the floor, pushed her body to one side with my free hand, and positioned my knee firmly against her back. She continued to tremble but not as violently as before. I took off my shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders, and dropped on the floor next to her.
How long had it been since we were like this together? How long had it been since I saw her face without coats of makeup? Her baby skin, a tiny mole above the bow of her upper lip, her eyes fringed with her own black lashes. How long had it been since a sanguine girl ran up and down our castle’s stairway, her red ponytail flying, her crystalline laughter echoing throughout the courtyard, bringing sunshine to my childhood?
A pair of jorabs, two petals of a rose, Aunty Zeinab used to call us, holding us to her breasts, nursing us at the same time.
Aunty Zeinab, my sweet Aunty Zeinab.
Two men in aprons struggled to roll the heavily weighted stretcher out of the apartment. The gray plastic sheet slipped down at the threshold bump, cruelly exposing Aunty Zeinab’s body. Uncle Zohrab rushed to adjust the sheet. Then he hobbled next to the stretcher, weeping, holding Aunty Zeinab’s bloated hand in his.
In the niche of the courtyard, next to the Snow Princess, Muezzin Rashid recited a prayer, the fingers of his hands entwined, his eyes closed: “Al-laa-hum-magh-fir li-hay-yi-naa wa may-yiti-naa wa shaa-hi-di-naa…”
• • •
How can I keep living, keep breathing, putting one foot in front of the other, when the people I love the most are no more? Cold flesh wrapped in white shroud, stuck in the ground for the worms to feast on.
How can I continue when I am the one who killed them, even if by nothing more than accidentally pulling on the loose end of a knot? A knot of perversion and betrayal the people I love the most had been entangled in.
How can I grieve for them when anger flashes through my heart and burns up my tears? When my head is like a desert with rising sand dunes of questions and not a speck of an answer?
I flipped open the seat of my piano bench. Tchaikovsky’s Seasons. I’d bought it a few years earlier but never got around to playing it. I turned over pages: January, February…June. One note after another, I wove a spell of remembrance, grieving my lost childhood and the people who had taken it away.
June: Barcarolle
Almaz and I lay under the limbs of an old weeping willow in Governor’s Park. We’re here to become sisters at last—blood sisters.
We dig the hole and line the colorful splinters of glass in the shape of a heart, carefully pressing them into the dirt at the bottom. We keep redoing it until the heart is perfect.
“Time for the surgery.” I reach for a package weighing down the pocket of my blouse.
“Always a doctor’s daughter.” Almaz laughs.
I unfold the cloth that holds Mama’s scalpel, cottons, and a roll of sanitary bandage. Just in case.
We poke each other’s index finger and squeeze two drops of blood inside the small glass saucer, turn it over, and place it atop the heart.
The burial looks magical—the heart glitters from under the glass saucer—clear except for the two snakelike rosy paths of our blood coming together, connecting at the pinnacle.
As the sun reaches its zenith, we take our vows of sisterhood.
“With the Sun, Moon, and Earth as my witnesses, I swear to be your eternal sister…”
Why did Tchaikovsky name it “June: Barcarolle”? More suitable would be “Autumn Song.” A musical eulogy.
As the broken chords of the song’s coda melted into the air, I heard Almaz’s words:
“What if you were me and I were you? After all, it was only a beauty mark on your tummy that defined our destinies. What if your Mama was wrong? What if she made a mistake? It’s possible, isn’t it?”
What would have happened if my parents had raised Almaz, and I was Aunty Zeinab’s daughter? What then? Would it have been me, instead of Almaz, taken to the Turkish baths’ whorehouse by my own papa? Would it be me, dishonored and shamed? Offered to a retarded Chingiz out of desperation to save my stolen honor?
An egg thief becomes a camel thief.
First, fancy rugs, rings, swords from the museums, and then my only sister—a priceless, flawless diamond, he called her.
Oh, how I wanted Papa to walk in the room, poised and dependable, so I could fall again under the spell of his laughter. So I could erase, scrape, tear out of my mind those unbearable thoughts.
But the only image of Papa that seemed to survive in my soul was that of a beast with his eyes glittering in a dark alley, spitting flames of lust.
Enough. I needed an escape from death and misery. I tucked Tchaikovsky back inside the bench, closed the lid of my piano, and grabbed my chador.
Bus Number 51 passed by crammed with people hanging from the doors. I ran to catch up with it at the next stop and arrived just as it was starting to pull away. Friendly passengers’ hands lifted me off the ground, and with one foot on the lower stair and the other hanging in the air, I traveled up Niyazi Street.
The Caspian Sea lazily rolled its turquoise waters. On the hillsides, mottled grape vines bathed in the slanting rays of autumn sun. I jumped off the bus at the entrance to Icheri Sheher and ran through its labyrinth toward Ashuglar Street. Energized. Feeling alive again.
“Salam eleykum, qiz,” Tahir’s next-door shoe-shop merchant greeted me. He sat in the threshold of his shop, playing shesh besh with his bowlegged son.
I reached for the knob and tried to turn it. Locked.
“Take off that chador!” I heard a commanding halt.
I turned around. Two young men in leather coats approached me. The one with a pale face took a paper out of his pocket and read: “By the District Committee in Charge of Communist Ideology and Ethics, you, Leila Badalbeili, are charged with moral debauchery and criminal association.”