The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar

“Erziehungskosten?”3 responded the parent in his piping little voice. “Your upbringing? Who raised you? Do you know how much you cost me! Good grief!”

“I have never seen you before,” said the daughter majestically, and her chest heaved.

“The papers!” The parent stuck some filthy scraps of paper into Griboedov’s hands. “Excellenz,⁴ here are my papers, if you wish to peruse them.”

Griboedov looked at the daughter with a certain enjoyment. The question of whether she was giving her testimony under coercion was superfluous. Even the sayyid shrank into a ball listening to her.

“Mr. Shäffer,” he informed the parent, and with two fingers drew away the parent’s scraps of papers, “according to the law, you have the right to have your daughter Susanna returned to you as one who has been abducted.”

The daughter looked at her parent silently.

“Vater,” she said, “if you take me back, if you dare do that, I will strangle you with these hands on the way home.”

Her hands were certainly very strong.

“… But,” concluded Griboedov, “the abducted one must recognize her relative. Such is the law,” he added, pleased with himself.

The scraps were fluttering like butterflies in the parent’s hands.

The parent blinked hard.

He kept blinking until the tears rolled out of his eyes. He stood small and impassive, with no expression in his red, withered face; he blinked, and the alien tears fell out of his eyes.

Then he pulled out a tattered wallet, opened a compartment, and carefully stuck the scraps of paper inside.

Herr Schäffer straightened up, put his little left arm behind his back. He took a step toward Griboedov and made a deep bow.

“Excellenz,” he said slowly and gravely, “permit me to bow out. I see this woman,” and he pointed his little finger at her, “for the first time in my life.”

And he raised his finger sternly. And then he stooped and minced away, without looking back, a small, gray-haired German in his new, clean shirt with a couple of missing buttons.

Griboedov made a sign. The sayyid and the German woman left the courtyard. The woman walked slowly. The two little boys were clinging to her wide trousers. The Cossacks stared at her as she left.

The old German would go to the bazaar, buy some oats for his hinny, and while he was haggling, tears would roll down his impassive face. Then he would pull a big, red handkerchief from his pocket, blow his nose, neatly light up his stinky pipe, and set off on a jolting journey along the foul roads for a day and a night. And back home, he would take a little axe to chop some wood and do so every day; and for the next ten years, he would never mention his trip to his old, doughy wife.

“She refused to recognize her father,” said a Cossack and looked aside.

“She has everything she needs,” yawned another.

“Swear to God, the old man hasn’t taken it well at all,” said the first one. “He spent time and money to come here, and she showed no consideration for that.”

“The other day, a merchant went away with nothing either. Such is the law. But would you expect a woman to honor the law?”

Abbas would send for Griboedov three times a day, search his face with his lively eyes, and sigh, disappointed.

Abbas knew how to deceive, and deceived with taste and daring. After the deceived left, Abbas would not smile—he would fold his hands on his belly, and his face would assume the satisfied expression of a satiated man. But when Griboedov left, Abbas would look longingly at the portrait of Napoleon and give a dissatisfied sigh.

If only Vazir-Mukhtar were angry, abrupt, or insistent. If he had demanded immediate payment of the kurors, right now, without further delay, Abbas would have known what to do: he would have haggled, been evasive, sneered, and then suddenly, like a dagger from behind the belt, would have said very calmly:

“His Majesty the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire is sending his ambassador over here and suggests we join forces.”

He knew just how to be evasive when in trouble.

But there seemed to be no trouble here. Vazir Mukhtar was polite; he behaved in an absolutely natural way and was not insistent on anything. As a matter of fact, he did speak about the kurors (to be precise, he responded to Abbas’s words); he spoke about them firmly. But Abbas had a good ear: he detected no real urgency: any urgency had been lowered by a sixteenth of a tone.

The life and death of Iran were in the pocket of this bespectacled man. And he pulled out of his pocket a handkerchief—and blew his nose into it. Abbas had exhausted his people, sending them to fetch Vazir-Mukhtar, all those ceremonies, meetings—and to no avail.

He had pretty much nowhere to get the kurors from, and yet he’d rather Griboedov were more insistent. He wondered where the trap lay. Where was the quicksand?

His bewilderment lasted a week. Still mistrustful, however, realizing that it was just a delay before the cat killed the mouse, Abbas cheered up. There was no trap: Paskevich had given the order not to withdraw the Russian corps from Khoi, but to withdraw only if the Persians failed to repay the kurors.

Even though Vazir-Mukhtar was trying to secure repayment of the kurors, he couldn’t insist on the full payment.

Colonel Macdonald was very pleased that his wife had become friendly with the young Russian girl.

“I am happy, darling, that our little backwater of a place has livened up. It’s a breath of fresh air for you. The Russian lady is so nice. She is just a child, really.”

And indeed, they went for walks together, they went horseback riding, and even arranged a small musical party: Lady Macdonald had a good singing voice, and they had Griboedov play the piano.

The colonel and Griboedov sat in their armchairs and looked at their wives, surrounded by young people.

The rough city stank of the corpses of stray dogs and the carcasses of dead horses. There they fought, argued, starved, and sang. But in here, it was quiet and smelled of old-fashioned scented sachets.

The colonel smoked peacefully. His face looked somewhat tired.

“The new novel that you’ve lent me is very entertaining,” said Griboedov.

“You think so? I enjoyed reading it. This Cooper will go far. I knew a Cooper twenty years ago, but this must be a different one. He’s got to be younger.”

The new novel was The Prairie, by Fenimore Cooper. The prairie in the novel seemed to be placed in a clean and spacious room, and all its dangers served a single purpose: to be avoided on the very same page. An old trapper, the game-catcher was the main character. He used to be a hunter, had experienced various misfortunes and now lived on the prairie where he’d become a game-catcher. He was fair-minded, forced to be crafty out of necessity, and he saved the men of his tribe.

One needed imagination in order to endure Persian boredom for a month, two months, a year.

To a certain extent, Griboedov imagined himself as that old trapper, the game-catcher. He liked the colonel’s terseness and his gray mustaches.

At the dinner table, Griboedov looked at a round cheese and poked it with his finger.

“Looks like Faddei’s bald head.”

“Didn’t you tell me he was a poet?”

She was still too shy to address him familiarly. After all, he was her teacher—first in music, and later in Ovid’s art of love.

“Faddei? Oh yes, yes, he is a true poet. With tears in his eyes.”

He wondered what Faddei was doing right now. But of course, he must be having dinner too! And perhaps the exact same round cheese was on his table. What he was talking about now was hard to imagine, but his thick lips were definitely moving. Katya might be dancing right now. He reached for the goat’s milk and shoved it away with disgust. The milk was sweet, Persian. Ah, Katya, Katya!

“Does Pushkin resemble his portraits?”

“Well, yes, and no.”

“Better or worse?”

How could he possibly explain what Pushkin was like?

“He is very quick in his thoughts and movements, lively, and then suddenly cold and polite. And then he pays compliments and comes out with insolent remarks, like a Frenchman. He is a worldly man, generally—he likes to shine. He might be a good man. We are not that close.”

Nino listened very carefully to the talk of Pushkin.

“Papa translated his poems.”

And she recited a Georgian verse that turned out to be Pushkin’s elegy: “Dreams, dreams, where is your sweetness …” This elegy was not one of Griboedov’s favorites.

He introduced his acquaintances to her in absentia. She knew very little about his life.

She loved tashahhus: the khans of Erivan bowing to Griboedov.

In essence, she was still a child, just a little girl. She would climb the sofa, cross her legs, sit on them, and examine Griboedov, fixedly. Her right eye was slightly crossed. The seating arrangement would conclude with his apparent astonishment:

“How has all this happened? Where am I, with whom, and why?”

She would stretch out her arms to him:

“We’ll live forever, and we’ll never die.”

She was not sixteen yet. Griboedov was twice her age. One day she had one face, the next day—another. She was changing in front of his eyes; she was still growing. A big, dark-eyed little girl.

Colonel Macdonald also enjoyed reading Cooper’s Prairie.

It taught him the art of conduct.

Young Frenchmen and some lieutenants wandered aimlessly about the novel, fell in love, meddled in everybody’s affairs; and only the old trapper invariably sorted out everyone’s problems.

Colonel Macdonald found it difficult to put things right. He saw how everything that he had been working on for the last twenty years of his forthright career, away from the green fields of Scotland, was falling apart. Disaster, which the colonel hadn’t tasted since the days of his youth—here it was, large as life.

As if a schoolmaster had wagged his admonishing finger at him and detained him for a word after lessons.

On the eve of his appointment to an important post, which he had been rightfully promised, matters had grown even more complicated.

He had become deeply involved in Russo-Persian negotiations; from long experience, he knew that if one intervenes in such a sphere, one gains influence over both parties.

And he had stood surety with his authority for the hundred thousand tumen, though he had immediately taken a deposit in gold from Abbas Mirza as guarantor. But St. James’s palace had expressed its disapproval, and the affront would be obvious unless …

Unless … unless….

The colonel often sat there, smoking and thinking it over.

Unless the Persians repaid the Russians in full …

But then, would Persia join forces with Turkey?

She would fall on evil times, and after that, it wouldn’t be worth her while paying the two hundred thousand tumen a year, according to the treaty.

No doubt about that. And so good-bye to the English influence, which had been nurtured by him like an exotic plant brought from overseas.

Or if the Russians reduced the retribution—and by the look of it, this was exactly what was going to happen—then he could definitely kiss the English influence goodbye three times over.

Abbas Mirza had already told him with a cheery smile:

“My dear friend, I can no longer go along with you. I’ve listened to your advice—and just see what has come of it!”

The colonel was worried. The hand he had been lifting up to his thin mustache for the last thirty years started to shake involuntarily.

He should stay calm.

The future was unsure.

But.

But friendship with the Russians was necessary. And Griboedov was certainly a wonderful man. Besides, he was so young.

Lady Macdonald’s closeness to Griboedov’s wife was most useful.

And.

And it was necessary to act within the boundaries of the possible, so to speak, to make use of what was given. He was not a hunter; he was a trapper.

Nevertheless.

All affairs were usually untangled (and not only in Cooper’s novels) by some random American Indian who seemed to appear from nowhere, and about whom not even the author himself had a clue. In exactly the same way, a cable about Paskevich’s defeat had just arrived from Constantinople. True or false, it wasn’t bad news at all.

And Colonel Macdonald spent his evenings locked away with Dr. McNeill, who was his usual tranquil self.

Macdonald was under Griboedov’s control. Griboedov felt rather sorry for Macdonald.

The English became his proxies.

He had insisted on Abbas issuing Major Hart with a firman about the imposition of the indemnity of the sum of fifty thousand tumen in any of the Azerbaijani regions he chose. He could do that to his heart’s content. He would definitely do it better than a Persian and would arouse the same hatred as a Russian official in his place.

Maltsov turned out to have a good style in writing official papers, though he wrote them far too cleverly. Maltsov believed that diplomacy was a very subtle thing altogether, that every word had to have a secret hook. He did not understand that the power of diplomacy was in making a direct and daring move—after a series of knight moves—with a queen, across the entire board. And yet he was a capable and very efficient official.

Dr. Adelung made even more progress. He had already been invited into Abbas’s harem-hane and had prescribed cordial for his favorite wives. Besides, he treated people free of charge, regardless of their nationality, and sick Persians, mostly in rags, crowded for hours outside his room on the ground floor.

Mekhmendar5 Nazar-Ali-Khan, who had been attached to the mission, would say to Griboedov courteously:

“Dr. Adelung has made them forget the road to the local hakim-bashi, and the trail to Dr. McNeill at the English legation has grown cold.”

In the evenings, with his hands stuck in the pockets of his wide, plebeian trousers that betrayed his German nationality, Dr. Adelung wandered the streets of Tabriz for the purpose, known only unto God, of some scientific observations.

Two ferrashi with sticks would walk ahead of him, shouting at the oncoming pedestrians and clearing the road ahead.

So Dr. Adelung would wander like some sort of Beethoven, and everybody in Tabriz got used to him as if he had always lived there.

In the evenings, Nino would go to the Macdonalds, and Maltsov would accompany her.

One day, Griboedov received a paper—two papers, to be precise—that turned everything upside down.

But it all began with Sashka.

He had been pining; his face had changed; he would not reply to Griboedov’s questions. He began to have clashes with Nino.

He would enter the room where Nino happened to be, and, silently and gruffly, would start to dust. He would flick the duster, a glass or decanter would fly onto the floor—which seemed to be his aim—and then he would finish the tidying and start to sweep the floor. Soon he had smashed quite a lot of crockery.

Griboedov would curse him, promise to give him a good thrashing, but Sashka would merely show his teeth, without smiling, and would leave the room.

He obviously detested Nino, nursing his hatred slowly, methodically. He would step on the feet of the old Georgian nurse, Darejan, whom Nino had brought with her. He swept out Nino’s heirloom brooch and threw it away.

He got quite out of hand, and when Nino told him to do something, he would go and call the old Georgian nurse. He wouldn’t obey Nino’s orders. He told the Cossacks that Alexander Sergeyevich had married her out of pity for her youth, and because she had been neglected by her parents.

“She’s too young,” he told the cook, “and she knows nothing of Petersburg life. She might yet, of course, get used to it.”

He got a lot of sleep or wandered about the bazaars. Once he was brought back by a couple of Persians, as drunk as a lord.

Sashka was going under.

And then, one day, he disappeared.

They caught him just out of town. He was walking with a little bundle of clothes, in an unknown direction, his head rolling distractedly, not looking where he was going. When they brought him back to his master, Griboedov smiled bitterly and said:

“Do you want to go to jail, Sasha?”

“If that’s what you want,” replied Sashka.

They were silent for a while. They were alone in Griboedov’s study. Nino was not there.

“Don’t I treat you well?” asked Griboedov quietly.

Sashka stood in the room like a piece of furniture, like a fragment of Moscow, of Griboedov’s student years.

“Where were you headed for?” asked Griboedov.

He thought perhaps that Sashka had been off to Moscow.

Sashka replied with an effort, and in a hollow voice:

“They say that there are Russian people living outside Tabriz …”

“What, were you taking off to join the runaways, that scum?” asked Griboedov, and rose to his feet.

Sashka bit his lips.

“The mistress harasses me,” he said abruptly.

Griboedov stared at Sashka, whom he had known for fifteen years:

“You are making it up,” he said spreading his arms helplessly and suddenly flushed up. “Get the hell out of here, you idiot.”

And when Sashka left, he rubbed his forehead.

In the middle of the night, passing by Sashka’s little den, he pressed his ear to the door.

It was pitch dark in the room, but he thought he heard Sashka tossing and turning in anguish, and heard a kind of hollow murmuring:

“Mama … she’s long dead”

Griboedov listened for a some time.

The papers that he had received were of an unpleasant kind. Paskevich had suffered a defeat and demanded that the kurors be paid immediately. The troops should also be withdrawn from Khoi without delay. Perhaps he was even pleased with the defeat because now he could honorably share Nesselrode’s opinion of Paskevich. The extent of the failure was unknown and from a distance seemed enormous.

The entire plan of action had to be changed at a stroke.

Abbas was pensive. Abbas was cheerful. A miniature of Nicholas was pinned to his chest, his attire was quite simple, and only the dagger behind his belt sparkled with precious stones.

His lies had all the dignity of sincerity and in the end turned out to be the truth.

“It requires a long time to prepare a nation for war,” he said to Griboedov with great dignity. “We’ve only just begun, while you too had trying times until you reached the present-day state of affairs.”

Only in ancient Rome could there have been such swarthy and lusterless faces and such fluttering nostrils.

“… And I have lost nothing in this war if I have gained your trust.”

He sat motionlessly—to pace the room while talking is the habit of the Europeans and madmen. But Abbas’s fingers twitched, his eyes danced.

“I am glad that I am talking to you, a happy man. Your eyes have now grown accustomed to happiness. Regrettably, I still don’t know what your wife really likes: does she care for silks, or sweets, perhaps? Women’s tastes are hard to guess. I wouldn’t like your wife to be bored here—she would blame me for that. Women always do.”

“We are quite happy, Your Highness, and my wife has asked me to convey to you her gratitude for all your trouble.”

He had now to praise something, but was at a loss what exactly to come up with. To praise the children was inappropriate: this might jinx them, and talking about wives was completely out of bounds.

“The fruit from Your Highness’s orchard is unbelievably fragrant.”

“That came from France; my orchard is withering.”

And Abbas speaks simply, as he does about sweets:

“And my country has been withering too. Mon cher ami, you’ve had a chance to look around, you’ve spoken to me, I’ve spoken to you. Write off the two kurors, parce que dans ma poche il n’y a qu’un sou, monsieur. ”6

The country is indeed withering. Griboedov sits poker-straight. His voice is dry:

“Your Highness, permit me to be frank with you. I was just about to tell you: pay the two kurors immediately, as any further delay might lead to disaster.”

The fingers stop their smooth dance, and Abbas looks perplexed: finally, finally, he has spoken. And how!

“Yes, but your superior, the great boss, made me a promise.”

Paskevich has promised him nothing of the sort.

“I am afraid, Your Highness, that I will nevertheless be placed in a position in which I will be obliged to demand immediate payment. We’ve waited long enough, Your Highness. I can see for myself the situation in your region. But His Majesty?”

Abbas fondles his dagger.

“Ah,” his fingers crawl up and down the diamonds, as though it were a keyboard, from the handle to the point of the blade. “Ah, His Majesty does not want to hear anything about it. I am left to my own devices. You are my only hope.

“Look here,” he goes on, and suddenly calms down, “listen, I’ve found the means. I shall be completely candid with you. I will pay a visit to Petersburg to my friend the emperor. I am so beset. I would like to relax. There are so many wonderful things in your fatherland. I will visit the great vizier Nesselrode. Is it true that the Village of the Tsars is absolutely stunning? I’ve been told so.”

The rays of light are darting about the rugs, blue, yellow, green, and violet. Now an Indian scroll, now a Persian rectangle come to life.

“I would like to explain myself at last to the emperor, man to man.”

“I believe that the emperor would be delighted to see Your Highness, in spite of his tireless military labors.”

“Precisely because of them,” says Abbas firmly. “I would tell my uncle, the emperor: if he were to recall the decisive day of his dynasty, he would understand me, as one heir another. My hour has come. The wheel of fortune goes up and down. And it’s not much joy when it goes down. Good fortune is like a woman—its face is veiled.”

A wide, fixed smile on his face, the white teeth—and who could read the meaning of his stare?

“Is Your Highness hinting at the rumor of General Paskevich’s alleged defeat?”

And Griboedov laughs as if speaking to Faddei. Abbas laughs too. He will now say something about the fruit, about women, about …

“This is exactly what I am hinting at.” He is admiring the change in Vazir-Mukhtar’s face. “The thing is that His Majesty the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire is sending his ambassador to me and is proposing to join forces against you.”

He says all this in the same way that he talks about fruit, about silk, about tobacco.

“What a shame that I’ve never seen your capital cities, my dear Griboedov. Don’t you have two of them, as we do?”

“There will soon be three of them, Your Highness.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Abbas does not understand.

“The third one will be Istanbul.”

Abbas speaks rapidly:

“You are a force to be reckoned with. This is beyond any doubt. I suggest an alliance with your emperor. His Majesty the Sultan does not always stick to our arrangements. I will take over the command.”

Griboedov sighs:

“I am afraid that Your Highness is late. Bayazit is in our hands. Mus and Van will soon surrender. Wouldn’t Your Highness’s actions impede our operations?”

Abbas sits back:

“What use is Van to me? That’s no way to wage a war, dear Griboedov. I will bypass Van; I will advance to Baghdad. The sheikh of Karbala is expecting me, and if I show up, a rebellion will incinerate the Ottomans.”

The plan is drawn. “I will show up”—he said it as Vasya Karatygin did at the Bolshoi Theater. But Vasya Karatygin had no smile on his face. And if Abbas were serious and his nostrils flared, that would mean he was bluffing. But he is smiling; consequently, he is sure of himself; consequently he is not lying.

Griboedov bows his head low, slowly, in front of the smile, before the shallow, indecisive and impulsive youth with the black beard. Yes, he is made from the very same material as Napoleon … and … Charles XII. He still has some superfluous features. But he might yet shift Iran, his old rattletrap of a country up the hill, and he might yet tumble down the hill. That’s why Griboedov bows his head—he cannot show his admiration, cannot let him see it.

When Griboedov is about to leave, Abbas reiterates as if he isn’t the one who said he will show up:

“My highly esteemed brother, Hussein-Ali-Mirza, writes to me that since our country is growing poor, I should accept the gifts from His Majesty the Sultan. What can I say to that? I am a mere mortal. And my country is growing poorer. Forgive me the two kurors, will you?”

Rain muddies the impoverished, bare, yellow streets of Tabriz.

Griboedov drives home, and the ferrashi cudgel with wet sticks the hardened backs of the human traffic.

And the cases multiplied, landed on his desk in a heap—the cases of Russian prisoners, the petitions of Armenian families eager to migrate to Russia, Abbas’s wives’ diamonds, the rumors of Paskevich’s defeats, and the tumen, thousands of tumen.

Abbas was destitute; Azerbaijan was bare.

His muhessili handed over all the tax money to the stronghold at the Russian legation, while the salaries of the Persian officials and the harem were in arrears. The diamond buttons of Abbas’s favorite wives were cut from their clothes.

Unrest was simmering in Khorasan.

Open insurgency broke out in the city of Yazd and the surrounding area.

In the Lorestan province, Mahmud and Mahmed-Taghi, the two shah-zades, fought each other. There was butchery there.

Kerman rebelled against Shah-zade Hassan-Ali-Mirza, the governor. Shefi-Khan was in command of the rebels.

The old Fat’h-Ali-shah left for Ferahan in order to collect money and gather troops from his sons—the governors of the provinces that had not yet rebelled.

Griboedov wrote dispatch after dispatch. He wrote them in haste, his teeth clenched, his expression resolute.

The country was ruined, and Abbas had completely exhausted his resources. Allow him to go to Petersburg? Perhaps form an alliance with him against the Turks? The man’s intentions were honest because the situation had reached a deadlock.

The answers he received came as if from the world beyond the grave. Pickled Date wrote that he was extremely displeased with Griboedov’s actions. Abbas had to stay in Tabriz; the kurors had not to be written off—everybody knew that Persia was a wealthy country, and he was amazed that the kurors were so slow in coming when they were so badly needed by Cancrin and Volkonsky. He was surprised that Griboedov was not paying a visit to the shah.

Nesselrode also wrote that he was extremely displeased with his actions. If Persia entered into an alliance with Russia, La Ferronays and the Duke of Wellington would break off their relations with him, and the European balance of power would be seriously threatened. Get the … what are they called? … the kurors … and withdraw the troops from Khoi.

Paskevich demanded that Griboedov extradite all the runaways, without exception; otherwise, it would be a shame and a disgrace.

The compass on the Russian ship was all over the place. As in 1814, the swan, the pike, and the crawfish7 pulled the strings, but the swan had long since died, the pike was illiterate, and the crawfish had acquired the post of vice chancellor. The long-deceased swan, the pike, and the crawfish were in agreement about one thing only: money was of the essence. Abbas had no money, so the ball was in the shah’s court.

Macdonald suggested that Dr. McNeill should be sent over to Tehran to insist that the shah shoulder the burden of the repayments.

Griboedov thought about it and agreed.

Macdonald needed it even more than Griboedov.

It seemed to Griboedov that he wrote to a nonexistent space, that his letters never arrived at their destinations. He inquired about his correspondence. It had arrived all right. Which meant that it had gone unread.

There was an error in the address; the addressee might not exist.

He muttered to himself:

“Swine, swine.”

He began to question his duties and to cease to comprehend his title, minister plenipotentiary.

The Persian word vazir-mukhtar seemed clearer to him.

“First of all, you’ll inform the shah clearly about the Cabinet’s desire to see him allied with the Sultan.”

“But …”

“Without committing ourselves.”

“… Without committing ourselves. But insinuate that there are possibilities. Then you will present him with the crystal that has arrived today.”

“Certainly.”

“I have delayed your departure until tomorrow, only on account of the crystal. It is a matter of some importance. I would ask you to arrange the presentation of the gifts as sumptuously as possible. Furthermore, you may wish to inform him that our payments will soon be terminated altogether.”

McNeill narrowed his eyes. Macdonald was paler than usual. He was touching his mustache with his finger.

“Isn’t it too risky, sir? I think that right now …”

“Please execute these orders to the letter. Right now, it is essential. Then, on behalf of the Russian ambassador, you can use the most emphatic terms to demand the payment of the one hundred thousand tumen.”

“His response will be to refuse, sir.”

“I hope so—and rudely too.”

McNeill was beginning to understand. He smiled.

“Your negotiations with the shah can drag on as long as you like. You can present the other gifts—rings, mirrors, and whatever there is in the five chests—to Manouchehr-Khan, Alaiar-Khan, and Khoja-Yakub. You will talk to them. Has Griboedov said anything to you about the Russian grenadiers?”

“No, sir.”

“Pity. You might want to meet Samson-Khan and present him with gifts for his daughter. According to my information, she is getting married.”

“Do I need to talk to him, sir?”

“Not really. The prince has informed him about the instructions from the Russian government. Take with you tea, as well as penknives, scissors, spectacles; in other words, five bundles from what has just arrived.”

McNeill was quiet. Then, his eyes still narrowed, he said slowly:

“Griboedov will go to Tehran himself, then.”

Macdonald glanced at him briefly.

“No, he prefers to act from a distance. The prince is in his hands. Besides, he is newly married.”

“But I know he’ll go,” said McNeill very calmly.

Macdonald put out his cigar and crushed it with his two fingers against the edge of the ashtray. He was thinking.

“You might be right. All the better. Inform the Ottoman ambassador about what we discussed yesterday.”

They got up.

“I’d ask you to get a move on,” said Macdonald, “and to keep in regular touch. I will respond to you immediately. Twenty men are going with you.”

Outside the windows, they could hear the sound of horses’ hooves: his wife, Mr. Burgess, Nino Griboedov, and the others were coming back from a ride.

“Do you remember, Doctor, what Cardinal Richelieu once famously said?”

The doctor did not remember, nor did he care for classical quotations.

“He said: he who avoids the game has already lost it. Quod est probandum.8 Do your best. Remember that the prince is entirely under Russian influence. Have a good trip.”

Griboedov had received an invitation from Abbas Mirza to visit the royal mint.

Having shrugged his shoulders and called Abbas an old rogue, he set off on a familiar route.

Ferrashi cudgeled the onlookers and the pedestrians on the backs, and he did not prevent them. Such was the tashahhus.

He looked at the turret of the palace and the balakhane9 as if they were the Red Gates of Moscow. Except at the top, ancient drums were on display in the balakhane. The sarbazes stood on guard as if they were bystanders, not soldiers.

He entered the side door confidently and went through into an oblong courtyard. He was met there by some chaparkhans, and they took him along the red brick–paved path. He passed through the ferrashi chamber into another rectangular courtyard. And again some chaparkhans joined them. He walked, surrounded by gowns, through the empty divankhane, and two more chaparkhans joined them there. From the rectangular courtyard, they took him into an octagonal one. Along the sides of the room ran huge frames with multicolored glass. The sun shone through them, and they flickered with flecks of bright colors, like kaleidoscopes. Another turret and a tiny little courtyard. The entrance to some tiny chamber. This was Abbas’s mint.

The doorway was of a sufficient height, but Griboedov bent his head as he went through.

The entire mint was contained in a single room. It was half-dark in here, after the sun and the kaleidoscope. Half-dark, and even cool because of the earthen floor.

Abbas sat on a simple wooden throne. He silently motioned to Griboedov to sit.

In the depths, men without outer garments, half-naked, were making fires in the braziers.

Griboedov narrowed his eyes; he did not understand. Abbas was sitting upright, wearing a white gown, and his face seemed yellow in the uncertain light. He ignored both Griboedov and the chaparkhans. He was looking at the braziers and the half-naked men.

This was how the Persian satraps used to torture traitors.

The fire flared up.

Abbas never spoke a word.

The chaparkhans were silent too, and so was Griboedov.

The logs crackled; the men breathed heavily, swarmed in the corner, squatting.

The fire flared up.

Abbas stretched out a bony hand.

Immediately, the men swarming in the corner got up. They were placing heavy, dull, swollen things on oblong platters.

And so, staggering under the weight, they stood in a line and began to bring the platters to Abbas.

Abbas leaned forward.

He felt the first platter with his hand and pointed his finger at Griboedov.

Griboedov rose and retreated slightly.

A huge gold candlestick of ancient craftsmanship, bulging disproportionately in the middle, lay on the platter like dull, dangling bunches of fruit, bubbling with tiny grapes.

And Griboedov did not dare touch it.

So they brought closer one candelabra after another, and some were long and thick at the top, others were engorged toward the bottom, and others again were swollen in the middle. Then bowls followed, and vessels. And all of them were covered with the minutest, needle-thin inscriptions.

They were brought to the braziers, and the half-naked men swarmed, unloaded them, and placed them into the flames.

The room grew lighter from the tiny streams of gold, from the flourishes and the little clusters that fell into the fire.

Abbas looked neither at Griboedov nor at the chaparkhans. Pompous, stern, black-bearded, he looked at the gold, following each coagulate with his dull eyes.

It suddenly dawned on Griboedov that in his battle for the throne, Abbas would butcher any of his brothers fearsomely, to the bitter end, and with no restraint.

It did not occur to him that he, Griboedov Alexander Sergeyevich, was the gravedigger of the Qajar empire. He felt neither hot nor cold about it. Neither did he spare even a thought for Persia.

But it occurred to him that he had spent his entire life as a hostage in an earthen hole alongside an alien Abbas, over a thousand miles and a thousand years; more alien than the melted candelabras, Abbas, for whom he cared nothing and to whom, in an evil hour, he had been tied by some force that had brought them together.

And in the same pathetic and accursed way, the awful loneliness invaded him like a live creature.

“Sixty thousand tumen,” said Abbas in French. “They will be taken to your mission tomorrow morning.”

Many a lovely figure is hidden by a veil.

But lift the veil and you’ll see

the mother of your mother.

▶ Sa’di

The clay roads outside were as slippery as ice; the fireplaces produced no heat. Wrapped in a warm shawl, Nino still shivered, and conversations were somehow getting shorter. She was pregnant, and her pregnancy was a tough one, tormenting, with shortness of breath and sickness so severe that it turned her entrails inside out. When the asthmatic attacks came on, Griboedov became frightened and irritated. Then he felt guilty. He was attentive to Nino and kept a reverent eye on her. Her face had changed; its color was now not looking good.

He received a letter from his mama, Nastasya Fyodorovna.

“My Dear Son, Alexander,

I received your letter. The post is slow these days; it came late, and hence the late response. I am delighted as any mother would be with your happiness. Send my blessings, belated as they are, to your wife, whom I’ve been able to picture pretty well from your letter … I can’t believe that you were so secretive and did not even think it necessary to share your intentions with your own mother. Though your poor mother is an old woman, even so, dear son, she is following your success with bated breath and dreams only of one thing: that a small corner be left free for her in your heart. For a long time now, I have had no other claim than this.

I hope that you do not overtax yourself by working too hard. Take care of yourself, even if for your lune de miel alone. Knowing your nature, I am out of my mind with worry. You are hot-headed, but you also cool down quickly—all those ‘Fata Morganas,’ as your papa used to say.

Marya Alexeyevna has really upset me. She is still cross with you for hinting at her in your vaudeville: she keeps saying to all and sundry that allegedly the Petersburg authorities are displeased with you for putting off going to Persia. That apparently, they consider it a faux pas. Be careful, my dear friend. Heed your mother’s warning. But bless her, what is there to talk about if, thank God, it hasn’t been published. I keep telling her that there is nothing of the kind in your vaudeville, but she won’t listen. Such are the fruits or your backstage escapades and duels.

Alexander, I beg you, for the love of God and in memory of your father, listen to Ivan Fyodorovich, who is our only patron. As you may remember, when the wagging tongues told Eliza that you had portrayed him under the name of Skalozub, I had to write countless letters to reassure her. He is our one and only hope. In the old days, your papa used to change his allegiances and make his dissatisfaction known, so he died with the rank of second major. Be sensible and remember both him and your uncle Alexei Fyodorovich. The choice scarcely seems so difficult since we are as poor as church mice. I know that you had no liking for your uncle. Out of sheer stubbornness. Your mother knows you, my dear. I was not going to mention it, but all that theatrical posturing, my friend Alexander, it’s too immature and as your uncle used to say, sour in the mouth, green behind the ears. You know it in your heart that he knew how to live well, and life is not cakes and ale, it’s an art. Out of the frying pan and into the fire—and still alive—as he used to say! You are a family man now. There isn’t much to write about an old woman’s life. I take it one day at a time, in debt up to here, but still managing. I live only through you, my son, and wait for you, mon cher, and your young wife, whom I long to meet as soon as possible.

Ah, mon Dieu, qu’élle est romantique, ta lune de miel dans ce pays pittoresque!”10

He tore up the letter from top to bottom, very slowly. It was because of her that he’d come here. And how well she knew him! That’s why no one else in the world had such power over him.

He was wakeful that night.

The rain kept pattering with a muffled sound against the multicolored glass and reminded him of what he hadn’t had time to do during the day.

Nino was asleep. Her face was yellow, like her mother’s, Princess Salome’s. He had no spectacles on and was surprised to note the similarity. He looked away.

They were out of pocket. Pickled Date had held up his salary; the gifts for the shah had got stuck in Astrakhan. Dadash-bek gave the old man in the bazaar a good beating. Uncle Alexei Fyodorovich, the kurors, the kurors.

It dawned on him: this was the war.

No one fully understood it yet.

Paskevich was fighting the Turks, but a war was being waged over here, a war without soldiers or guns, which was even more unnerving. And he was the only one who waged it, the commander-in-chief and the hostage. That’s why the damned time dragged on, in spite of his being so busy. And Sashka might be the only one to have sensed it.

Something was lacking in the room. And this robbed him of courage, of confidence.

Something was missing. He moved his shortsighted eyes about the room.

It was cold; he saw the yellow blotch of Nino’s dress.

The room was lacking the pianoforte.

So it started to rock, the little Russian ship sailing over the destitute country.

The captain is of good cheer; he is poring over the maps. But don’t put too much trust in him, he is pale and wan. He does not allow himself to trust his instincts, and this is what you mistake for cheerfulness.

Once he found himself doing a strange thing: he was humming an absurd little song:

Midget Maltsov, worthless crumb

Off you go, little Tom Thumb!

And he realized that he couldn’t stand Maltsov, this respectful, assiduous, and efficient man.

It was one of those letters received as if from beyond the grave. There was nothing particular about it. But one phrase he came across in it made him so livid that he nearly choked. Not even a phrase, just a word.

Nesselrode wrote in French to instruct that no zizanie11 should take place in relation to the British legation. And that the kurors were late.

Griboedov mumbled:

“Zizanie.”

He leaped to his feet, gone pale, almost green:

“Zizanie.”

And with one sweep, he sent all the papers flying off the desk and onto the floor.

Maltsov entered the study.

“What is it?” barked Griboedov. “I am listening,” he said, noticing that Maltsov had changed color and was staring at the scattered papers.

“Alexander Sergeyevich, Colonel Macdonald has sent a letter from Tehran. It is addressed to you.”

Griboedov broke the seal and threw the crushed envelope on the floor.

“… I caught up with His Majesty on his way to Farahan, and with all the courtesy I could muster, I conveyed to him Your Excellency’s words, but His Majesty ordered me rudely to mount my horse and forbade me to show my face before him again. I expect further instructions from Your Excellency …

McNeill.”

Griboedov burst into laughter.

“Go on, then, mount your horse, and off you go!”

Maltsov was staring at him with eyes wide open.

“Ivan Sergeyevich,” said Griboedov, and Maltsov stood at full attention in front of him, “prepare everything for our departure. Get in touch with Abbas, request a mekhmendar. Inform the doctor. Tell the Cossacks to be ready to march. We are leaving for Tehran in two days.”

Maltsov was silent.

“Did you hear me, Ivan Sergeyevich?”

“But Alexander Sergeyevich,” murmured Maltsov, “remember your words … The gifts for the shah haven’t arrived … You were sorry that you had to hurry to Tabriz. And to hurry now to Tehran …”

“Would you care to make immediate arrangements? And no zizanie, if you please.”

Maltsov went off.

And so: Tehran.

When on the previous night he had discovered that he was a general without soldiers, a commander-in-chief without a front, when next to him, in the same room, there opened up this absurd and empty, desolate theater of war, his eyes had looked around for a friend and found not even a piano.