1
Ensign Skryplev, like any other man, had habits and nightdreams of his own.
Officially, he was a terrible criminal, almost a renegade, like Abdallah, but he was also a straightforward and timid person.
It was unclear even to him how he had become naib-serheng, twice the lawful possessor of Zainab-Khanum, the right hand of Samson-Khan, and God only knows what else.
He used to be a rank-and-file ensign of the Nasheburg Infantry Regiment, Astafy Vasilyevich Skryplev, but now he didn’t know exactly who or where he was. He had never even dreamed of becoming a naib-serheng. It was because of cards. And it was an unseemly matter indeed.
Not that he liked cards in themselves; he was even apprehensive of them. When saying goodbye to him, his father, a retired official, told him:
“When you are in the regiment, son, don’t drink and brawl. It’s no good to drink and behave disgracefully, son. And above all, son, steer clear of cards. Remember what happened to Uncle Andrei? May God’s grace be with you. And don’t shun friends. One shouldn’t shun people. If you have an eye for a girl, be gentle with her … subtle … kindhearted … lower-class girls are easier to deal with, son … That’s about it.”
In the first few months at the regiment, Skryplev was really reserved and somewhat sparing with money. Deep in his soul, he was a pedant. With his poise, he could have reached the rank of colonel, or even major-general—decorated, gouty, and with walking stick and galoshes in his retirement, he could have gone back to Kherson province to live the rest of his life in peace and quiet. His life could have turned out quite well. But it was his restraint that was his undoing.
The commander of the regiment was an avid gambler and enjoyed winning. He began to look askance at Skryplev and decided that the ensign was “a canny fellow and something of a clam.”
In the very first engagement, in which Ensign Skryplev showed courage, he was overlooked for an award. Everyone got crosses and promotions except him.
Injustice secretly delights a retired colonel, even if it is directed against him. By the end of his life, a retired colonel becomes embittered, and that bitterness requires sustenance. It keeps him going; happiness kills. Not so with an ensign.
Such a simple thing as human injustice can instantaneously change his entire being altogether, particularly if an ensign is irreproachable. He is no longer that same ensign; he has altered internally. Such an ensign is capable of a crazy step.
Ensign Skryplev became a gambler. But his gambling activities ended as quickly as they began.
Perhaps he had taken it into his head to take revenge on the commander and win. His gambling was over within one night. In a big wooden peasant house that was a substitute for the nobles’ club, he lost all his money and casually scribbled down a note for ten thousand rubles that he owed to the commander.
He left the commander with a straight and steady stride and was about to blow his brains out the very same night, not only because there was not a chance in hell he could come up with the money, but also on account of the humiliation. But it passed quickly. The ensign’s mind, as precise as ever, began to plan ahead on its own. He now imagined that he would meet a rich, land-owning lady, she would fall in love with him, and the commander would be crushed. Or, suddenly, a written order from Count Paskevich would be received: the commander to be court-martialed, the ensign to be made a colonel, and again the commander crushed. Or something equally unclear would happen, some mixup would come about, and as a result, the commander would yet again be crushed.
Ensign Skryplev would often forget about the ten thousand, but then he noticed, as if he were observing a stranger, that something had changed in him, Skryplev.
And then, near Kars, during one of the nightly sorties, when the ensign’s only desire was to distinguish himself famously, he was crawling toward the enemy line and approaching it very closely. His heart started pounding: he heard the enemy talking.
Instead of roaring out “Hurrah!” and engaging the enemy or accomplishing something equally desperate, the ensign paid closer attention—and recognized Russian speech.
“Damn it, don’t smoke now,” said one of the men.
“Why the hell shouldn’t I?” replied the other one.
The ensign looked back at his five fellow soldiers. He saw that the soldiers were listening too.
“These are Samson Yakovlich’s men, Your Honor,” whispered the noncommissioned officer, who was lying next to him.
That was the moment when the ensign ought to have roared out “Hurrah!” and brought off something desperately daring. Instead he looked at the officer, unbuckled his saber with great care, laid it on the ground, and as nimbly as a snake slithered his way in the direction of the enemy conversation. The soldiers lay there for a while, staring at the ensign as he crawled away, and they suddenly did the same.
This was how Skryplev’s apostasy came about.
He came to only in Tehran, and tried not to give his defection much thought. He was as precise as ever, did everything that was required of him efficiently and easily, and imperceptibly became Samson-Khan’s right hand. But one could see that he treated his change of circumstance too lightly, as though it were temporary and accidental, as if he had been transferred to another regiment or given another appointment.
Samson took a liking to him, probably for his quietness and concentration. But one thing about Skryplev seemed suspicious to him, a very important circumstance: Skryplev never sang.
Whether it be the habit of an old dragoon or something else, but Samson loved people who could sing. He trusted them. His singers were really superb.
Listening occasionally to the goings-on in the other half of his house, Samson would chuckle:
“So quiet. Like a monastery.”
It goes without saying that he had never spoken about this to Skryplev; but little by little, it started to weigh on him. His daughter Zainab-Khanum, on the contrary, was as pleased as punch. She gazed at the ensign the way an ape looks at its master. She coiled up like a snake at his feet. Besides, she was very beautiful—much better than any woman that Skryplev had had a chance to know.
All this could have been too much for him, but first and foremost, he was a precise person.
His night dreams were always the same: he was doing something wrong. Either he had plundered the regiment cashbox for no reason whatsoever and hidden some scrap of a document that he had absolutely no need of under his shirt, or he had stuck a dagger into some shaggy man in a sheepskin hat. It was, however, a toy dagger; the shaggy man, also like a toy, tottered and fell. Skryplev looked into the murdered man’s purse, saw only two small coins, and took them.
And other dreams along these lines.
After Tehran had gone insane during the reception ceremony for Griboedov, Skryplev grew even quieter and more precise, but everything went wrong. He walked twice as much, applied himself twice as hard, but to no avail. And he would look at Zainab dejectedly.
Zainab thought that it was because she was not pregnant yet; some old Persian healers would come, cast some spells, whisper some words, and go away.
Ensign Skryplev came across Russian speech in the streets. When he ran into a Cossack at a bazaar, he would recoil. Once he saw a tall man riding by, impetuous, narrow-faced, and with chin thrust out, immobile, as if derisive, and shuddered.
“Vazir-Mukhtar,” said somebody next to him.
The ensign sensed that his hour had come.
2
The day after Griboedov’s arrival, an entirely insignificant event took place: two people were robbed of something they had no use for anyway.
The thing was that Griboedov’s presence had already been felt in Tehran, even before his arrival.
For Samson-Khan, he was a warning to Abbas Mirza: the memory of the spectacles and the immobile face, and the entirely vague and apparently unconnected memories of the Russian countryside, with its bitter smell of rowan trees, the barking of dogs, and of the river where he used to fish as a boy. All that his forefathers had had to fight for and come through.
For Alaiar-Khan, he was the conversation with Dr. McNeill, the indemnity and the dream of the shah’s throne: for a moment, he recalled a fragment of its carving so clearly that he shut his eyes.
For Manouchehr-Khan, he was the news passed on to him by his nephew, Solomon Melikyants, a Russian collegiate assessor who had come to Persia with the ambassador but had managed to reach Tehran earlier. Solomon told his uncle that the Russian ambassador had cornered the English one and had him exactly where he wanted him. And Manouchehr-Khan looked at his treasure chests apprehensively, as if weighing them. Before the ambassador’s arrival, he had been entrusted by the shah to consider the cases of the Russian captives, interview them, and hand them over to their owners.
And for Mirza-Yakub, he was a Shamkhorian looking for his niece, an ordinary, filthy Shamkhorian in a shaggy sheepskin hat. He idled about the bazaars having a good look around.
Mirza-Yakub began to take notice of him by the palace. A couple of times a day, the Shamkhorian strolled nonchalant past the palace like an idle tramp. But his movements were controlled like those of a man on a mission.
And Mirza-Iakub grew alarmed. He sent his servant to speak to the Shamkhorian and to inquire where he was from and why he had come to Tehran.
The servant soon came back and said that the Shamkhorian had accompanied the Russian embassy, that the ambassador was to arrive shortly, that he had overtaken the ambassador, and that he had been looking for his niece in Tehran.
And Mirza-Yakub pressed his hand to his heart, because his heart had skipped a beat. But he said nothing to Khozrow-Khan.
And so, two days later, when the court, including Khozrow-Khan and Mirza-Yakub, had been busily preparing for the Russian ambassador’s imminent arrival, Khozrow-Khan was told that the Shamkhorian was asking to see him.
Khozrow-Khan went out on the balcony and, without greeting the Shamkhorian, listened to him. Then, having given him no reply, he went back to his chamber, deep in thought.
He could send Dil-Firuz temporarily away from Tehran. But how boring and empty life would be without her! Her face was like an apricot, downy like a child’s. She was plump and prone to laughter.
By the evening, he had resolved to send her away. Mirza-Yakub came to see him. Yakub listened to his friend very carefully.
Looking at Mirza-Yakub, one could never tell his thoughts from his fixed and apparently mindless gaze. His harem duties had taught him to assume a calm expression.
But this time he chuckled and said in a nonchalant way:
“The Shamkhorian? I have seen him. I think he is a madman who is here on a wild goose chase. His niece was indeed taken captive. She used to be in Tehran, but she has long been in Mian Dasht.”
“How do you know that?” asked Khozrow-Khan, surprised, “and who was that niece with?”
And Mirza-Yakub smiled again and made a certain sign with his hand.
Khozrow-Khan understood that the sign referred to the shah.
He was still worried.
“No mistake is possible?”
“A mistake is always possible.”
Mirza-Yakub left.
An unbroken horse was brought out of the stables for Khozrow-Khan, and he took his time breaking it in; when the steed was completely exhausted, the khan refused his dinner and went to bed having arrived at no decision. He was as indecisive as a woman and as brave as a horseman. He was also gullible and tended to believe in what brought him comfort. Yakub’s idea gradually sank in, and Khozrow became convinced that it was right.
A week passed like that; nothing happened.
Then Manouchehr-Khan summoned Khozrow-Khan. Manouchehr-Khan occupied a big house behind the shah’s palace, near the Shimlah Fortress. Khoja-Mirza-Yakub and Manouchehr-Khan’s nephew, Collegiate Assessor Solomon Melikyants, were already there. The old man greeted Khozrow-Khan and sent his nephew out of the room while the three men, the three eunuchs, stayed.
Pusheki were served.
The tall, smooth-faced old woman chewed the pusheki, looking at the Amazon with her kohled eyes.
Then she said to the Amazon:
“Khozrow, I am very fond of you as my nephew, and all three of us here are like brothers. A Shamkhorian made a request concerning you. He suspects that his niece is with you.”
The tall Amazon glanced quickly at one and then the other.
The other was silent.
Manouchehr-Khan went on:
“My people will accompany him to your quarters, and you will have to present them your Dil-Firuz.”
“It looks like she has to be taken out of the city after all,” said Yakub wearily.
Khozrow-Khan stuck out his lip.
“Maybe it’s not her, after all.”
“And yet my advice is to send her away, Khozrow,” said Mirza-Yakub. “The man can be mistaken; she has to be taken away, so that nobody knows where she is. The Russian has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes.”
“This is impossible,” said Khozrow-Khan indecisively.
“Why?” asked Yakub. “I have a place near Qazvin.”
“It’s unclear how long she will have to be sent away for. And besides I am pretty sure that it is not her.”
Mirza-Yakub did not object.
Manouchehr-Khan breathed a sigh of relief: he had to warn Khozrow-Khan, but he didn’t want to get into trouble. That Russian ambassador! Manouchehr-Khan was cautious. He regarded his companions with his blighted eyes, the color of liquid dust, and smiled.
“Mirza-Yakub always expects the worst; Khozrow-Khan always expects the best. I am an old man, and I personally expect neither good nor bad. The only thing I know for sure is that the man expecting the worst attracts the worst. You, my children, are thinking about the Shamkhorian but have given no thought to Dil-Firuz.
Both eunuchs looked up at him.
“It is not enough for the Shamkhorian to recognize his Dil-Firuz: by law, Dil-Firuz must also recognize the Shamkhorian.”
Indeed, Khozrow-Khan hadn’t thought about it.
“You know her better than I do. My advice is to show her to the Shamkhorian, but to make sure that she fails to recognize him.”
3
The love of a eunuch is unfathomable. Khozrow-Khan asked Dil-Firuz to stay with him come what may. The girl had grown used to him. She had been treated to her favorite dishes. He had given her ten more tumen for her headgear and forty for a necklace, and the girl would scatter the coins and then put them in neat little piles. She enjoyed the glitter and the tinkling of the coins.
Then came the day of the Shamkhorian’s visit.
Mirza-Yakub had come to Khozrow-Khan just before his arrival. The khan took Dil-Firuz by the hand and led her out of the room.
The Shamkhorian had already been expecting them.
The hunt began.
Dil-Firuz saw the Shamkhorian and turned pale. She looked away.
Khozrow-Khan was watching her as if she were an unbroken horse, closely and pointedly.
Dil-Firuz began to dart from place to place. She was dashing about the porch with tiny little steps, like a beast at bay in a clearing in the woods.
She stopped and stood as if rooted to the ground.
She knitted her brows and narrowed her eyes as if it were not a sunny day, but a thick fog.
She was peering at the Shamkhorian.
Khozrow-Khan ducked down a little, as if about to mount a wild mare, as yet unfamiliar with the lashing whip, with a single leap.
The Shamkhorian took a few steps toward her.
His hands dangled down by his hips instinctively, as those of a soldier do, before a general.
Dil-Firuz was dressed in rich clothes. The gowns of the khan and the khoja sparkled in the sun.
“Nazlu-jan,” said the Shamkhorian hoarsely.
Dil-Firuz took fright. She recoiled. She touched Khozrow-Khan’s hand. She rolled her head back and lifted it up to look at the khan as if he were the minaret of a mosque.
And at that moment, Khozrow-Khan gave her a little smile out of the corner of his mouth. Khoja-Yakub was looking at Dil-Firuz without stirring.
The Shamkhorian began to pull something out of his deep pockets with his dirty, trembling hands. He stretched his knotty hands toward Dil-Firuz: tiny wrinkled limu—sweet lemons and white sweets, cheap and stale and with some fluff stuck to them—were in his palms, along with other rubbish that had gathered in the Shamkhorian’s pocket.
Dil-Firuz waved briefly with both hands, disgusted.
Then she looked at Khozrow-Khan roguishly, like a kitten.
And Khozrow-Khan burst out laughing. His white teeth showed in a complete smile. He laughed like a woman who had spotted a feminine character trait in her child. He said:
“Don’t be scared, Dil-Firuz; don’t run away.”
Only then did Dil-Firuz come up very slowly to the Shamkhorian, and her little hand grabbed the sweets from both his hands.
Tears trickled out of the Shamkhorian’s eyes. He grabbed Dil-Firuz’s hand, brought it to his eyes, and mumbled:
“Nazlu-jan, Nazlu-jan, don’t you recognize me? I am your amu-jan. Do you want to come to me? Don’t go away from me, Nazlu-jan.”
Khozrow-Khan was still smiling. But Khoja-Yakub stood humbly and limply, deep in thought, quite submissively.
Dil-Firuz blushed, pouted, tensed; her head began to shake and then sank into her shoulders.
The Shamkhorian took her in his big arms and pecked her loudly on the head.
Dil-Firuz burst into quiet tears.
But when she felt the Shamkhorian kiss her head, she gave a quiet and plaintive squeal like a dog, suddenly buried her face in the Shamkhorian’s hands, and began not to kiss but almost lick them. Both the Shamkhorian and Dil-Firuz murmured:
“Amu-jan, amu-jan.”
And Khozrow-Khan burst into tears.
It was unclear whether he felt sorry for Dil-Firuz, for the Shamkhorian, or for himself. He stood and cried, wiping his tears with his sleeve.
Mirza-Yakub looked at him, perplexed, as if seeing him for the first time in his life.
So Dil-Firuz, the joy of his heart, that day became the sorrow of his heart—Sug-e-dil.
The mysterious creature with a thousand hands and eyes, the Russian Vazir-Mukhtar, occupied a wonderful house quite befitting his rank.
The house belonged to one of the sixty-eight shah-zades and stood by the fortress long known as the fortress of Shah-Abdul-Azim.
The fortress was a mile and a half from the shah’s palace, along the crooked streets, so the ambassador did not have to face the prospect of running into the shah on a daily basis.
The house was located by the wall of the fortress, next to the defensive ditch. Its main entrance was situated to the west. In front of the entrance was a semicircular courtyard, which merged seamlessly with the street. The courtyard had been specially built before Vazir-Mukhtar’s arrival in order to accommodate as many people as possible by the entrance and in the defensive ditch, including space for tethering their horses, so that everybody who wanted to could greet him. And indeed masses of people were crowding into the court right now—the relatives of Armenian and Georgian captives, traders, petitioners.
The main gate was high and wide, the passage into the courtyard dark, shabby, fifty steps long. But the inner rectangular court was spacious, with a pool in the center. The court was partitioned into four sections—four flower beds, but with not a single flower in them. Instead, they now contained the Persian guards, with Yakub-sultan in charge.
That courtyard was surrounded by a one-story building that would have served as a kind of hotel somewhere in provincial Russia, except this one had a flat roof. Nazar-Ali-Khan, Griboedov’s mekhmendar, with his ferrashi and pishkhedmets, occupied one half, while Maltsov’s and Adelung’s quarters were in the other half. They were guarded by the very same ferrashi.
Another courtyard had a single tall poplar tree in it, as solitary as a soldier on watch. A low little wicket gate in the main gate was guarded by Russian soldiers.
The third courtyard was not a courtyard as such, just a tiny south-facing area with a narrow two-story building, like an unfinished minaret: three rooms upstairs, three downstairs.
A little staircase, as steep and narrow as a fine hair comb, led from the middle of the courtyard straight onto the second floor.
On the second floor lived that mysterious creature, Vazir-Mukhtar. There, he sat and wrote and read; no one could tell what he did there. It was not easy to reach him, a shrouded man: one had to unravel the three entrances and unwind the three courtyards.
5
He sat there, on the first floor, and wrote and read; nobody knew for certain what he did.
He could, for example, be busy writing dispatches to all the foreign countries. Or he could be thinking day and night about the greatness of his emperor and of the Russian state. Or he could be looking into the many mirrors. When preparing the chambers for him, Manouchehr-Khan had considered that Vazir-Mukhtar might spend time looking into the mirrors that he had placed in there, with bright flowers daubed on the glass, so that while sitting at his desk, he could see ten versions of himself all at once.
And indeed, Vazir-Mukhtar saw his reflection in the mirrors. But he tried not to look for too long. A tenfold glorified and multicolored Vazir-Mukhtar gave no particular pleasure to Alexander Griboedov.
And indeed, he appeared to be deep in his papers. He was writing:
Across the Volga, in their homeland,
The travelers, wayfaring falcons,
Packed their saddlebags and braided
Their horses’ manes.
His ear registered the faint sounds, which became distorted as they reached him through the three courtyards, and instead he caught out of the ether the old Russian song about dashing fellows.
Here they were,
They crossed themselves before they left
And set off on a long high road.
There were many robbers on the long, high road, which was guarded by soldiers and officials, and in order to save themselves, they had to take a side road.
And they did save themselves:
A house of gold and in it lives a beauty,
A fair maid, the daughter of a prince.
And he sipped the cold sherbet that Sashka had brought in and everything around him turned into the coolness that he had been searching for all his life:
Ah, that miraculous air,
The gardens under Eastern sun,
Where the cool breeze never fails
And the fresh springs of water run.
Joy was needed, jollity, but there was no pianoforte. There was only the white ivory inkstand, the kaliam-dan, in the shape of a tombstone. And it looked like the grave of Montrezor.
The sinful soul forgot his Holy Russia …
They glorify him in their song:
He lived a stormy life and now
He rests in peace and lies alone.
He was convinced that this song would be sung. Blind men and musicians wandering along that long, high road would sing it, and peasant women would cry over it:
To the deathbed of her son
No old mother comes to mourn,
No young bride to weep for him.
He put the sheet of paper aside, perplexed.
“Young wife.”
The drunk Samson had sung something like that ten years ago by his window, and Griboedov had not come out to speak to him.
This time he would achieve Samson’s extradition. He would not die; his greatest fear turned out to be just a run-of-the-mill official trip to fulfill his orders.
Griboedov saw his own face in four mirrors at once. The face looked back at him closely, abstractedly and, strangely, at a loss.
He called for Sashka, but Sashka failed to show up.
6
An audience with the shah.
The ferrashi are like a cloud around him. The sarbazes in the courtyard salute him in the Russian manner.
The court watches Vazir-Mukhtar’s every step, and every gesture is assessed. England is assessed by the depth of Vazir-Mukhtar’s bow, by the length of his audience with the shah, by the number and quality of the gowns receiving him, and the finery of the gold vessels in which the halviat is served.
The shah’s dwarfs, dressed in motley, stand by the staircase.
And Griboedov remembered Ermolov’s elephantine steps.
In 1817, Ermolov perceptively, patiently, and discerningly recaptured all the minutiae of the etiquette; and as a result, his soldier’s boots approached the very throne of His Majesty, and he took a chair and sat down in front of the shah.
Because a short distance from the throne signified the power of the state, and sitting right in front of it indicated the Russian state’s supremacy.
Since 1817, the Russians, after Ermolov’s heavy-handed example, had been relieved of the details of such etiquette.
The English, however, greatly enjoyed observing the minutiae. They would take their boots off, pull on the special red socks, and stand before the shah like red-legged birds.
But the etiquette changed ten years after Ermolov’s clod-hopping audience, when the Persians and Russians in the thousands bowed to each other, right down to the earth itself, and stayed like that, stretched out in their graves.
Now the etiquette was back in force, and the right to the chair and the boots would have to be won all over again because the chair and the boots were worth a few kurors.
A kalianchi dressed in ancient Persian clothes and with a tall hat on his head was holding a gold hookah on a mother-of-pearl tray.
The eunuchs glanced at the gilded breast of Griboedov’s uniform. His cocked hat was pressed to his side like a briefcase.
Manouchehr-Khan’s geriatric eyes peered into Griboedov’s, and he pointed hesitantly to the small side room.
The room was the keshikhane—the tent for the bodyguards where the boots were pulled off the ambassadors’ feet and the red socks put on. There, in accordance with ancient tradition, a Persian would touch the visitor’s foreign uniform, which meant a body search.
But Manouchehr-Khan merely looked with his old woman’s eyes into Griboedov’s. The khan’s eyes had seen a lot. And the hand in its blue sleeve returned immediately to its usual position.
Vazir-Mukhtar’s gaze was calm, concentrated, unspecific, as if looking past the eunuch’s eyes, or through him. Manouchehr-Khan understood: the socks were not going to happen. He drew open the curtain—the perde—with care, as if it were a sacred veil.
When, surrounded by the red-bearded crowd, Griboedov entered the hall, the shah greeted him standing, and Manouchehr-Khan looked into Griboedov’s eyes again. They were narrow, dry, squinting. And after receiving a sign from the shah, the eunuch made a sign, and Griboedov sensed a chair behind his back. Maltsov and Adelung stood behind him.
Griboedov made a deep but brief bow and sat down, just as Ermolov had done before him in 1817.
The shahinshah—the king of kings, the padishah—the mighty ruler, Zilli-Allah—the shadow of Allah, Kible-i-alem—the center of the universe, was standing by the throne dressed in the ancient garb.
The garb was solid, stiff; it was made of red cloth that couldn’t be seen from beneath the rash of pearls and the occasional carbuncles of diamonds which covered it completely. Diamond stars stood out like two wings on his shoulders and made them wider than they were. There was a pearl sun on his chest, two dragons with emeralds for eyes, and two lions with eyes of rubies. A string of beads—tasbikh—made of pearls and diamonds hung round his neck; his beard was combed out and looked like the collar of a woman’s oversized mantle. The shah looked like the Russian tsarina Elizabeth, “beloved silence,” except for the beard. The collar stood, and so did the mighty monarch, who was unable to move, with the clothes weighing fifty pounds.
A gilded bust of Napoleon in a glass case to the right of the shah gloomily observed the proceedings.
The richly dressed ministers in the multilayered red and brown jubbe, one on top of the other, as thick as greatcoats, had white shawls wrapped around the black kajari.
Prince Zil-li Sultan, fat and ceremonially dressed, with a diamond feather on his hat, stood in the front row. Corseted like a wineglass, pliant and feeble, with the smooth, swarthy face of a young libertine, the black-mustachioed younger prince, Abbas’s son, Khosraw Mirza, the grandson of the shah, stood in the second row. He was relegated to the second row on account of his pedigree: he was descended from a Christian woman and was therefore of impure blood.
A fat man, who would have looked like Faddei if not for his bronze complexion, stood next to Khosraw. The fat man snorted loudly and gazed at the proceedings with bulging eyes, mouth half-open and with no expression whatsoever.
That was the court poet, Fazil-Khan.
His duties included reciting poems to the shah, to the ministers and to noble foreigners. His poetry had to be as badly written as possible because Baba-Khan, similar to Nero, or King Ludwig of Bavaria, or the Mongol Khan Yun-Dun-Dordzhi, was also a poet and did not look favorably on rivals.
Khoja-Mirza-Yakub watched Vazir-Mukhtar closely.
And Vazir-Mukhtar sat in the chair looking relaxed as he observed the shah and the gold Napoleon.
He answered all the questions very precisely, but his strength did not lie in this.
Vazir-Mukhtar seemed deep in thought.
He sat like Olearius in front of the tsar of Muscovy and was in no hurry since it had happened already, three hundred years ago.
With his arms crossed on his chest and his unsophisticated head bent slightly sideways, the golden Napoleon observed the live, ancient tsar in front of his throne and Olearius sitting with his cocked hat pressed to his side.
The shah was turning purple.
Two large beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.
A quarter of an hour passed like that.
Maltsov thought that everyone must see him trembling.
What was Alexander Sergeyevich thinking of in his chair? What was he looking at? Why did he keep on sitting? How depressing all this was, dear God! The shah would pass out.
And indeed, what was Vazir-Mukhtar thinking of?
Perhaps of the kurors?
Perhaps of his wife, of her arms, of what she had said when they were parting?
Perhaps he was comparing the appearance of an Asiatic despot, with flightless wings and a fifty-pound costume, to the appearance of another, subtle and round, like a doll, wearing the blue uniform of a gendarme, the color of the pale-blue sky?
Or perhaps the indecent lines of the great Russian poet were inappropriately passing through his head?
Beard, beard, glorious beard!
Pity you are not baptized …1
And Griboedov kept on sitting.
Dr. Adelung stood behind him staring at the eunuchs, looking like a short, round hookah in his uniform.
Eunuchs were of interest to him as a natural phenomenon: one of them stared at him unpleasantly, point blank.
The shah shut his eyes like a dying cock.
Beard, you increase the profits
Year-on-year in the country’s coffers …
At this point, Griboedov crossed his legs.
So he continued to sit, suddenly oblivious to everything, contemplating a pearled tray, with not a single thought in his head.
The ministers cringed. Alaiar-Khan bit his lip.
He did it deliberately, to stop the awful word, the one that can be uttered only by the shah, from escaping his lips.
“Murrakhus—depart.”
Alaiar-Khan would have liked to pronounce this word. It would untie everyone’s hands …
The shah’s arms dangled. His mouth gaped, he breathed heavily.
Napoleon under the glass seemed to have moved his head.
Maltsov’s legs felt numb, and he longed to sit on the floor.
Nobody said a word.
Oh, how blest your wearer’s might,
Beard, substitute for sight!
The shah moved his lips. Another minute would pass and …
Griboedov rose, made a deep, brief bow.
Everyone stirred into action. The retinue approached the shah, took him by the arms, led him out. His Majesty was indisposed.
In the adjacent room, Griboedov and his secretaries were treated to halviat—the ice-cold pink sherbet, tea, and coffee.
Manouchehr-Khan and Khoja-Mirza-Yakub were the hosts.
Fazil-Khan minced in small steps toward Griboedov and addressed him in French:
“I hope Your Excellency won’t be unfavorably disposed to the poet who would like to greet the famous son of a great country.”
Griboedov looked at the Persian man of letters with pleasure.
“You are not a historiographer, are you?” he asked politely.
“Oh, yes. To a certain extent. This is one of my responsibilities.”
Karamzin, however, was much subtler.
“Go ahead, please. I am all ears.”
Fazil-Khan stuck his belly out just a little bit.
His voice was high, tenorlike, and he declaimed like Shakhovskoi—with little howls.
Contrary to expectations, the poem was pretty good—about the fragrance of the flowers from a certain powerful country whose scent had reached Iran in the heart of a lily that had taken the form of a wonderful man.
“Marvelous. I am touched. Your poetry can be compared to that of our infamous poet, the illustrious Count Khvostov.”
Fazil-Khan blushed with pleasure.
An old man, whom Griboedov hadn’t noticed before, was wearing the poor clothes of a dervish. How could a dervish be admitted to the ceremony? Raised eyebrows, an ashen beard, an old gown, and the stooped back of a holy fool. This was no Count Khvostov. This was Nikita Pustosvyat on a visit to the Kremlin’s Faceted Chamber.2
His lips twitched very slightly and said something to Fazil-Khan. Fazil-Khan’s face lit up, and he translated for Griboedov:
“The Greatest Monarch of Russia was the mighty Peter, referred to all over the world as ‘the Great’ …”
That was the compliment of a dervish.
“I am happy to hear the name of our great monarch in a friendly country.”
The dervish’s lips twitched a little more.
Fazil-Khan dilated his eyes and babbled:
“… who, however, had no luck in his dealings with the Sublime Porte …”3
Griboedov narrowed his eyes:
“That success befell his great-great-grandson.”4
And the dervish said no more and never touched his coffee.
Vazir-Mukhtar had sat in front of His Majesty the shah for almost an hour.
Russia’s significance had strengthened so much that, when proffering a gold cup to Vazir-Mukhtar, Manouchehr-Khan did not dare look him in the eye. Because of his shortsightedness, Vazir-Mukhtar had failed to take a good look at the dervish. It was Abdul-Vahab, muetemid-ud-Doula,5 the enemy of Alaiar-Khan, a man of the old Persia. So a small failure goes hand in hand with success.
7
Two sarbazes carried Sashka by his arms and handed him over to the Cossacks.
The Cossacks lifted Sashka and carried him through all three courtyards.
They carried him into the ground floor, where Sashka occupied a nice enough room.
One of the Cossacks said sympathetically:
“Bloody hell, just look at him! Hold him higher—his hands are dragging on the ground.”
Griboedov saw all this through a glass door, from above.
He ran downstairs to see Sashka.
“Call the doctor,” he said gravely and quickly.
Adelung came in and sent at once for bandages and gauze.
Sashka lay bloodstained, as if painted all over with fresh red paint. Only his hands were pale, with firm, rectangular nails, and they lay twisted on the meager brown blanket.
Griboedov leaned low over him.
Sashka’s right eye had disappeared under a huge, rainbow-colored, swollen bruise, his mouth was ajar, a thin trickle of saliva gathered in the corner, and his left eye stared at Griboedov earnestly and attentively.
Griboedov’s lip began to tremble. He lifted the soft, matted lock of hair from Sashka’s brow.
“Can you hear me, Sasha?” he said. “My dear fellow.”
Sashka blinked at him with his one eye and groaned:
“Mmm.”
“Who’s beaten you so viciously?” asked Griboedov, helplessly, disgustedly. “Bastards.”
“We know who: some fellows at the bazaar, Your Excellency,” replied a Cossack equally quietly and with some dignity.
Dr. Adelung busied himself over Sashka. He washed the blood off with warm water, examined the head and felt his pulse, carefully, like a scribe who lingers at the beginning of a new paragraph.
“He is not in danger,” he told Griboedov. “Give him some vodka.”
They poured some vodka into him, and Sashka, clean, bandaged white all over, lay meekly in his bed. Griboedov never left his bedside.
He gave him a drink from a spoon and looked at him with that degree of apprehension and yet distance that in such cases can be felt only by the people one is closest to.
Sashka soon fell asleep. Griboedov sat there with him until evening.
Sashka was his milk brother. He remembered him as a little boy in a blue uniform. The boy had nebulous eyes, yellow, chickenlike hair, and a snub nose. He would stand motionlessly in the middle of the master’s drawing-room as if waiting to be pushed. Griboedov would push him. Sashka never cried.
Griboedov looked out of the window at the rectangular courtyard with the whitewashed walls.
When they were boys, his cousin Sasha Odoevsky would visit him, and they would harness Sashka and ride him around, pretending he was a horse. Like a hunted beast, Sashka would dash to and fro, stumbling into armchairs, until the mama Nastasya Fyodorovna would send him off to the servants’ room. Sasha Odoevsky was now in shackles, and Sashka was bandaged.
And he remembered how papa seemed to shy away from Sashka; he even seemed fearful of him and used to frown when he caught sight of him at home, and, as if to spite her husband, mama would call Sashka back in. He remembered his papa’s sidelong glances. And he looked at Sashka’s thin lips and tall forehead: was Sashka his half-brother? When he was little, he seemed to recall how they whispered about it in his presence in the servants’ quarters, that there was a row and they teased the nurse, and the nurse wept.
He also remembered the warm knees of the nurse, Sashka’s mother, and a grave, singsong admonition:
“Ah, Alexander Sergeyevich, so full of mischief!”
Nino was suffering in Tabriz and he was to blame, his body was to blame.
May all those he had ever loved be saved: Sasha Odoevsky, Nino, Faddei, Katya, and Sashka. Let them be saved; may they live quiet, ordinary lives; may they go through them peacefully. Because if someone is marked, that person will have no peace and will have to find his own salvation.
“Since I am a man in the service of the state …” said Sashka hoarsely.
Griboedov listened closely.
“… Ignorance,” proclaimed Sashka.
“Go to sleep; there you go again. So full of mischief,” said Griboedov.
Sashka settled down.
The candles were lit, and Maltsov looked in: he needed to see Griboedov.
“Are we … ?” asked Sashka in a high-pitched voice. “Are we already leaving the city of Tehran?”
8
In the evening, Griboedov wrote letters: to Nino, to his mother, to Sasha Odoevsky. He laid aside the letter to his mother. He also put aside the letter to Odoevsky, who was doing time in a Siberian prison: he would have to wait for the opportunity to pass on the letter—which could take years.
Then he started a letter to Paskevich:
“My venerable patron, Count Ivan Fyodorovich,
I hope you haven’t thought even for a second that I could lose sight of my duties and fail to inform you about my actions … I bring to your attention every detail pertaining to my business for the simple reason that I have no other concerns besides those that are of relevance to you … Here is Bulgarin’s letter regarding you, and you can only imagine how happy I am to read this: ‘… The hero of the present war, our Achilles—Paskevich of Erivan, displays traits worthy of Generalissimo Suvorov … Glory and honor to him. He’s been victorious since 1827.’ And I would correct him: ‘since 1826.’ I am sending you a page of the original. I have copied it because his handwriting is quite illegible …”
He kept writing.
Then he suddenly stopped and scribbled:
“A Request”—and underlined the word.
“My precious benefactor. Now, without further ado, I throw myself at your feet and if we were now together in the same room, I would do it and shower your hands with my tears … I beg you, can you help in rescuing the unfortunate Alexander Odoevsky from adversity At God’s throne there are no Diebitsches or Chernyshevs …”
9
Sashka was ill for a week. He had indeed been badly beaten up.
On those days, Griboedov would come to see him and spend a long time with him.
Little by little, Sashka told him what the matter was, and it turned out to be not so simple.
It wasn’t only the matter of ignorance.
Sashka, a man in the service of the state, had been browsing at the bazaar. He was not really interested in any goods, and had no intention of buying anything; he simply inquired about prices.
He felt some piece of fabric and lifted the cut from the counter in order to look at it in a better light and to examine it thoroughly. He might have taken a couple of steps away with it, because it was quite dark beneath the roof of the stall. He was not going to steal it, nor was he intending to buy it, it’s just that this was the practice of Moscow landladies of the best possible breeding. But because of his Persian crassness, the trader started to yell. Sashka did not understand what he was yelling, but he realized that he was being insulted. Sashka went back to the shop to return the cut of poor-quality fabric and to berate the shopkeeper.
Then various locals joined in the shouting, and a cobbler, as long-faced as a horse, yelled louder than the lot of them, although Sashka had been nowhere near his shop because his goods stank abominably and the shop itself was pretty filthy and was littered with scraps of leather.
At that point, two long-haired sarbazes ran up and without hesitation struck Sashka on the back with their sticks. Sashka told them that he was in the service of the state, from the Russian legation, and that his master was the highest official, appointed to be in charge of the entire city, and that it would be their own heels that would soon be cudgeled.
In response to this, the sarbazes yelled at him in fluent Russian: “You scum! Moscow skunk!” and started to wallop him all over with their clubs.
The shopkeepers thrashed him with whatever they could put their hands on, but he still stood firm.
Then, when his vision started to blur, he thought he saw a Persian officer who barked at the sarbazes in perfect Russian: “What’s wrong? What the hell is this?” Then he might have said: “An extra guard duty!” and could have added: “And I’ll report you to the khan.” After which Sashka’s memory failed him, and he was brought home by the sarbazes, who were truly Persian in appearance.
“Moscow skunk, you say?” asked Griboedov.
And he wrote to the shah requesting the extradition of Samson-Khan. In his letter, he used only half of the shah’s titles, which made the document not so much a request as a demand.
10
Having made a full recovery, Sashka cheered up.
Like a disheveled, white-feathered bird, he wandered about the three courtyards and tried to engage the Cossacks in conversation.
“You, troopers, are country bumpkins,” he would tell a young Cossack. “Conscripted young and thrown into the deep end. While I am in the service of the state, in the civil service. I’m more interested in polite conversation. When Alexander Sergeyevich and myself go back to Petersburg, there will be music, refined talk, and no end of visitors.”
To another Cossack, he said patronizingly:
“I’d like to ask you, troopers: what does life hold for you? Drums and drills, day in day out. You are not your own masters. And I will soon be a free man.”
Such idleness and garrulousness was not at all characteristic of Sashka. Griboedov was apparently not going to end his servitude. And the Cossacks frowned when he hovered about in the courtyard. He began to swing his arms, something that he had never done before. He looked as if he were about to take off. He repeated all the time that he was a man in the service of the state, that he had had enough of Persia, and he might be very useful in the future. To whom exactly remained unclear.
He probably felt ashamed around the Cossacks who had seen him in a battered state, and he did not know how to behave with them. Once, when he left the embassy’s gate and took a few steps, he stumbled into that Russo-Persian officer who had rescued him from the clubs of the Russian sarbazes.
Sashka passed him without an acknowledgment, but the officer stopped.
“Wait a minute, old chap,” he said and blushed.
Sashka retorted that he was a man in the service of the state, and the law prohibited him from standing there with a foreign officer.
But the officer also seemed rather apprehensive. Without looking at Sashka, he said:
“I have a very important matter to discuss. Can I see anyone from the high-ranking gentlemen of the Russian mission?”
Sashka looked him over and asked brusquely:
“I could explain to one of the officials,” replied the officer politely.
“Since I am now a man in the service of the state …” said Sashka …
11
“Khabar-dar! Khabar-dar!”
A camel driver led his caravan through the bazaar so deftly that he nearly crushed three beggars.
They gave vent to piercing shrieks:
“Ya-Ali.”
They tried to crawl into the shop of the aghengher, a blacksmith. With his tongs in his hands, the blacksmith yelled at them and drove them out. The hammers were pounding; the files of the chelonghers, locksmiths, squealed shrilly; the camel drivers were swearing; the beggars were shrieking; and in the commotion, a sarbaz pilfered a chunk of meat from the butcher’s.
The butcher grabbed a rock, which served as a weight, and hurled it at the fleeing sarbaz. It went straight into the shelf of an artist selling kaliamdans, inkwells. The artisan lost his temper and dashed out of his tiny shop; along the way, he bumped into the baskets of ezgil and watermelon in a fruit seller’s stall. He grabbed the watermelon and hurled it at the butcher.
The fight was in full swing. The lots were thrashing the beggars, while the starved, scalded dogs were biting the lots on the calves.
“Khabar-dar! Khabar-dar!”
Farther on, a crowd of servants, behind and before the ceremonial carriage, beat the backs of the passers-by with their fists to clear the way.
The coffee drinkers observed the butcher, the artist, and the chelonghers. They carried on chatting, sipping coffee out of tiny cups.
Indoor stalls, half-lit, with bowl-like cupolas, stretched on for miles. The sun was scorching through the holes in the cupolas, and the pillars of sunbeams that came in seemed to support the domes.
During these days, particularly fierce fights broke out at the bazaars.
The beggars blamed the camel driver, the aghengher blamed the beggars, the butcher blamed the sarbaz, the artist blamed the butcher, and the fruit seller blamed the artist.
The crowds of beggars and lots roamed the bazaars.
Everyone was to blame.
And the coffee-shop customers calmly drank their coffee and chatted.
During important debates about matters of state, the viziers drank coffee and tea and smoked their hookahs. Numerous pishkhedmets were always waiting on them, observing the elaborate etiquette, the tashahhus. The viziers debated loudly, windows and doors open wide. Ferrashi stood outside and listened.
This was how their words spilled out onto the streets and spread about the bazaars.
The coffee-shop customers discussed the latest news.
If a rug in Persia was a piece of furniture, then a coffee shop was a newspaper. One of the visitors, a kadii, who sipped his coffee, was a significant front-page article; the two elders smoking hookahs were comic features; one of the merchants was the chronicle and another, a fatter customer, was the advertisements.
“I no longer have the best rugs. There are no deliveries from Khorasan. But I have good quality rugs and they are not too costly. And they are even better than the ones from Khorasan.”
“After the Muharram holiday, malik-ut-tujjar of the drapers will take three sigheh at once. When will he find time for his own agdas? How low have we sunk! My father had only four agdas and not a single sigheh, and he had time for each of them.”
“The English hakim-bashi was giving away spectacles and penknives. He sent some spectacles to my house, but I don’t wear them—can’t see a thing with them.”
“I’ll tell you what,” says the kadii, “between you, me, and the gate-post: two of Alaiar-Khan’s wives have left to go over to the Russian Vazir-Mukhtar. They are thoroughbred Persians; they left for the Russian embassy at night, and they are there now.”
“I know. But I hear the women are infidels. They say they are from the Armenian town of Gharakilisa. Infidels,” says the old man.
“Trade is slow,” says the merchant, “and I’ve vowed to slash my flesh in the days of Ashur.”
“My son has given the pledge too,” says the old man nonchalantly, “and I’ve hired a helper in the shop. My other son will impersonate Yazid, may his name be cursed.”
The sad month of Muharram, when the holy imam Hussein was murdered, was drawing close. Those who had made the pledge would be cutting their flesh with their sabers. The white shrouds that they wore would be stained with blood. They would pierce themselves with needles and nip their flesh with pincers. They would sprinkle their heads with ashes, and the actor who would impersonate the cursed Ibn-Sa’ad who had arrived on the black horse would be all but torn to pieces by the very same old men and vendors who even now were drinking their coffee so calmly out of those little cups. And on the second day of Ashur, having lit wax candles, they would search the courtyards for the vanished prophet or his remains.
In the meantime, they kept sipping their coffee.
Any news of Vazir-Mukhtar was as scarce at the bazaar as Khorasan rugs. Rugs from Khorasan were no longer available: there was unrest in Khorasan; one could do without them. Nobody remembered how the kafir servant had been beaten up at the bazaar. Kafirs were alien men, to be dealt with by officials. The quality of goods had deteriorated; gangs of lots roamed the country and plagued the city.
Every day at the bazaar, the executioners cudgeled thieves’ heels, cut off their right hands, ripped open their bellies.
12
The visits were paid rather unsuccessfully; he visited Abu’l-Hassan-Khan third, while he ought to have visited him second. One could really lose one’s head with this tashahhus. On the other hand, the other two men were now on his side.
Some of the high-ranking officials did not wish to favor him with a return visit. Never mind. That was the end of the matter.
During a private audience, weighing fifty pounds less than during the official one, the shah told him: “You are my emin, you are my vizier, all my viziers are your servants: address all your concerns directly to me and the shah will not refuse you,” and so on. Griboedov assumed that it was all just a pure formality, a matter of phrasing, but he could sense that the shah was yielding, and in the end the eighth kuror would be paid.
The issue of the prisoners was much more disagreeable. First of all, not all of them were captives. Many of them had lived here for ten or fifteen years and came from provinces that had been conquered by the Russians practically minutes ago. But the treaty had to be honored. Russian influence had to be exerted; otherwise, it was unclear what he was doing here.
He was the representative of the Russian state in the East, and that was no small thing. Thousands of families were arriving, changing their lives—he was taking them out of Persia as Moses had once led the Jews out of Egypt. He was sick and tired of them; they were under his feet all day long, every day.
One night, two women asked the Cossacks to let them through to the mission on important business. The Cossacks were reluctant. They called Maltsov.
The women turned out to be an Armenian and a German. They had been recently abducted and delivered to Alaiar-Khan’s harem. Both were from Gharakilisa and were longing to go back to their homeland. They had managed to escape with the assistance of Alaiar-Khan’s eunuch, whom they had bribed.
Maltsov ordered the matter to be reported to Griboedov. Without getting out of bed, Griboedov made arrangements: to let them in, to get them settled in the second courtyard, and to allocate them separate quarters.
By the terms of the treaty, Alaiar-Khan had no greater privileges than any shopkeeper. It would do him no harm to give some thought to the Russian treaty.
The next day, Khoja-Mirza-Yakub paid Griboedov a visit.
The shah’s eunuch was instructed to ask Griboedov to let Alaiar-Khan’s wives go. He didn’t spend long at the embassy, and the conversation was short.
Griboedov advised Alaiar-Khan that he should write to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to Mr. Nesselrode. He might make an exception in the treaty for Alaiar-Khan. Khoja-Mirza-Yakub looked in the mirrors, saw Griboedov and himself, thought a little, and then rose slowly, made a polite bow, and left.
13
When Samson found out that Griboedov was pressing for dastkhat on his extradition, he said nothing to his men. He pulled himself together, tightened his belt, and for some reason went to inspect his house.
It was built very soundly.
“Needs whitewashing,” said Samson to the old janitor, and stuck his finger in the peeling white paint on the wall, which looked like cracked eggshell.
He picked at it, and the eggshell cracked delicately, and the cracks spread further. He examined the fence.
“The fence is no good, needs new supports.”
He was upset by the puddles in the courtyard.
“Needs to be paved.”
The very next day, they began to whitewash the house.
When the house was replastered and joiners had mended the fence, Samson sent for Skryplev.
“Take a seat,” he told him.
Skryplev sat down on the edge of the chair.
“This is not going to be an easy conversation,” said Samson, “and it’ll be a short one. I want the truth. No need for lies. I’ve outfoxed better brains than yours.”
And only then did he glance at the blond hair and the big freckles.
Skryplev breathed hard without saying a word.
“Can you sing?” asked Samson earnestly.
“Sing?”
The ensign’s bewildered face became as ordinary as it usually was.
“N-no, I can’t.”
“I know you can’t,” said Samson, “but if you are reluctant to speak, you can always sing, can’t you?”
“I’d ask you not to joke, Your Highness,” said the ensign hoarsely.
“All right, I am joking,” said Samson. “It’s a joke. Everything is a joke, I’ve joked all my life, but now the joke’s on you. Very well, then. Don’t say a word. I’ll speak first. They’ve put out an order for an extradition.”
The ensign seemed at a loss again, but then his face regained its usual expression.
“They are going to extradite us to Russia, with a guard of honor. You, as commander, will be pardoned and awarded a silk stripe on the collar round your tender little white neck. Because you are high-ranking, and your father is the chief chickenherd in Kherson.”
The ensign flinched. He quickly rose to his feet.
“I’d ask you, Samson Yakovlich, not to refer to my …”
“I just did!” said Samson. “I have referred to him without asking for your permission. You may submit a request in writing to ban me from referring to whomsoever I wish.”
Skryplev headed toward the door.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, Skryplev. Prepare the request, I’ll sign it, and together we’ll send it to His Excellency Ambassador Griboedov. Why labor on your own?”
The ensign was no longer in such a hurry. He stood where he was, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down above his collar.
Samson kept silent for a while.
“I’m not having a black sheep in my flock,” he said flatly. “Get the hell out of here. I’m not holding you back. Go and get your things together right now. The janitor will give you a hand. And I’ll even give you a gift of a unicorn’s horn for the road. Call Zainab in here.”
The ensign made for the door.
“On the other hand,” said Samson, “should I let you go? You might start blabbing. You’re a big shot, a runaway ensign of His Imperial Majesty’s troops. You’ll have to earn your living somehow.”
He looked at the ensign’s feet.
“It’s a sure thing you’ll sell me out. No, I’d rather put you in a pit. We have good pits here. Should I put you in the pit? You spend a couple of years in one, and then you die. The janitor will hold an Old Believer burial service for you. Or should I call a proper priest?”
The ensign was silent. A fair-haired creature with bright, homely freckles, a Russian ensign, Astafy Vasilyevich Skryplev was listening to Samson’s words as if they had nothing to do with him. As if he were in the theater watching a play in which a Russian peasant dressed up as a khan was reprimanding somebody else. By some fluke, that somebody turned out to be him. Persian pits, the insult to his father, his old father called a chickenherd, something about a unicorn’s horn as a gift—all these things swam in the head of the ensign, Astafy Vasilyevich Skryplev.
“Call Zainab in,” ordered Samson wearily.
Zainab came in and, for some reason, stopped by the door.
Samson looked at her closely and sneered.
“Not big-bellied yet, are you? Never mind.”
Zainab was looking at him with unfaltering eyes.
“Your husband is leaving,” he said in Persian. “Going back home. You’ll live with me. Move over to the anderun. Right now.”
Zainab was not crying: she showed no fear.
“Do you get it? Your husband is a kharab. I’ll find you another. Don’t cry.”
She wasn’t crying.
“My fault,” said Samson in Russian. “I’ve ruined the girl.”
He didn’t beckon her, didn’t caress her. For some reason, his feelings for her had cooled after she got married. She was still his daughter, but after the marriage not once did she stroke his face.
“Why are you standing here? Off you go.” He waved her away.
“I don’t want my husband to leave,” said Zainab. “Let him stay.”
“Get the hell out of here!”
Samson got up and showed her his fist. It was not a khan who stood in the room, but a runaway sergeant-major, Samson Yakovlich.
“Out!”
Zainab stood there the same way as her Armenian mother used to, the one he had killed; she had recoiled but wouldn’t move.
“I’ll kill you, bitch!” yelled Samson.
He punched her on the shoulder and started to shake because he could no longer see anything; his fist went back and forward, as if of its own will, until he suddenly unclasped his fingers, grabbed her by the hair, and hurled her through the doorframe.
Then, with his boot, he kicked her away from him and went stomping on through to Skryplev’s half of the house. He stood for a while at the brown calico studded door, wheezing, something rattling in his chest.
He stopped by the door, clenched up, gathered himself together, and threw his fist at the door as if it were an empty space. The door did not budge an inch, so he stepped back in disgust, clenched up again, and walked away slowly, smashing the glass in the gallery as he went. He threw his fist at the glass again as if into empty space, and the glass splattered like water in a bowl.
Having reached the last pane of glass, he dug into it with his elbow, because by then his hands were covered in blood.
He stood at the end of the gallery, where it went on to form a balcony, and watched the blood dripping from his hands.
The drops bubbled up on the scarlet palm of his hand, then trickled down his fingers and dripped off in thick rivulets.
“Chickenherd,” he said quietly.
14
Almost a month had passed since the day when he had arrived in Tehran.
The kuror would probably be paid.
Essentially, he was first and foremost an honest and efficient official. He disapproved of Paskevich and Nesselrode, but he nevertheless had some respect for them. He might criticize them because he respected them. He might even be happy in his subordination to them: now that the Tehran mission had been accomplished—and quite successfully to boot—the eighth kuror would be received. His career was now certain to be on the rise. Faddei and his dear mother would be ecstatic. And he would never tell anyone about his fears.
This was how it was all working out.
And what was the Tehran mission, after all?
Just a brief stay in the city of Tehran, some office diligence, some noble craving for heroic exploits in service to the state. And the exploits themselves were not even worth a mention—clerical work, for the most part.
His mama, Nastasya Fyodorovna, was aware of his ambition. He was happy obeying orders. He was beginning to feel a craving to patronize others; he was eager to put in a word for Dr. Adelung being awarded the cross. He even wrote a very kindhearted letter about it to Paskevich. “He has not asked me for this favor, though when we were in Tiflis, Adelung was eager to be introduced to Your Excellency in person. He is known to all as a most right-minded, bright, and able man … These lines from my comedy now seem to me amusing:
And when it comes to offering a job or an award,
It’s only right that for relatives I should put in a word.”
Sometimes he felt like joking that he should pay more attention to his own habits. He had noticed, for example, how the kindhearted Maltsov, as if it were God’s will, had reconciled himself to the fact that Griboedov would listen to a document absentmindedly and then make him repeat it. One of the chief’s little habits, as they say.
That was the way he was. He started to assess his bearing and stature as if through other people’s eyes—a useful thing in Persian politics. He grew used to tailoring his every move in accordance with the peace treaty. The treaty was half his own work. But now it had grown to extraordinary dimensions; it was taken for granted as something that had to be observed.
He felt rather irritated, as if some force compelled him to commit rash acts. For instance, he shouldn’t have sat so long in front of the shah—ten minutes would have been enough. What stupid carelessness. It was a miracle that he’d managed to get away with it. Only with the dervish had he committed a faux pas—everything else had been satisfactory. During the day, he forgave himself and was able to brush it off as his inexperience. But in general he adhered to the treaty. There had been official misunderstandings with Nesselrode, and the whole business might end in his dismissal.
At night, he gazed at the furniture and at the rugs. And he prayed. Once he found himself in tears. That was the way he was. He was growing old too fast.
15
Close objects seemed somehow farther and farther away, and a day seemed as long as a year. Sashka had been beaten up at the bazaar—almost a year ago, was it?
The air was thin and so rarefied that a step felt like a mile.
The dastkhat for Samson’s extradition went ahead, along the slow, red-tape route, through paperwork and negotiations. Maltsov was in charge of both.
Ensign Skryplev hung about the legation. Maltsov had entered into talks with him.
Griboedov could easily await the resolution of the conflict in Tabriz.
And yet he was wavering.
16
Finally, the shah gave him a farewell audience. Griboedov did not weary the old man any more. And the old man sent him the order of the Lion and the Sun of the first class, and the order of the second class to Maltsov and Adelung. The orders showed an exquisite craftsmanship.
Rustam-bek and Dadash-bek were busy; the luggage was packed; the hammers pounded in the courtyard; the chests were nailed down; the harnesses were polished at the stables. A carriage was dragged into the courtyards, and the Cossacks washed it with soap and scrubbers very thoroughly, until it shone. Sashka stood over the rugs and beat the dust out of them slowly, sluggishly, as if inflicting insults.
They were leaving Tehran the following day.
17
Griboedov was at Maltsov’s. In the last days of their work together, they went to each other on visits: from the third courtyard to the first. That made the Russian mission look like a noble’s estate whose masters were leaving for the city for the winter. Maltsov was to stay in Tehran to carry out some business affairs.
Griboedov was saying something trivial when they heard the tramp of the marching soldiers’ feet and the sound of the drum. When the drum fell silent, they could hear only the marching. Suddenly a high-pitched, vibrato voice rang out somewhere not far off:
A soldier’s solace …
And the others caught it up evenly, as soldiers do, accompanied by their steps:
A soulful friend …
Griboedov gave a start. He listened in. The teaspoon he was lifting to his lips stopped midair, and he left the room, paying no attention to Maltsov or the doctor. He walked through the gate. The Cossacks saluted him. The sarbazes in their full dress uniforms were marching along the street. They strutted with their chests stuck out like Russian Guards, not like the Persian sarbazes, with their mouths agape. And their commander marched ahead of them, with his sword unsheathed, as if on parade. He was dressed in a sort of a navy blue Cossack uniform, with a golden belt, and had on a tall Persian hat. The thick braids adorned his epaulettes like those of a Russian general.
He marched past the gate lightly and upright, and only squinted at the men standing at the gates. But he eyed Griboedov, and Griboedov eyed him.
Soldiers, suntanned, young and old, were marching by. One of them smiled. His posture was splendid. On they went. The drum rolled again.
So Samson and his battalion marched past him as if to say farewell, to sing goodbye.
Griboedov felt ridiculed.
He did not go back to Maltsov’s, where his tea was getting cold. He went to his own quarters in the back courtyard. He stood over his packed and locked suitcase for a while. The trunk was bursting with things.
Griboedov thought for a little and stuck a little key in the lock. The lid of the suitcase flew up as if it had been waiting for that. Two books fell out. They had been stuck in a hurry on top of his shirts. He looked at them like old friends whom he had met at a bad time. One of them was de Gérando’s philosophy, the other an issue of The Herald of Europe. He leafed through it aimlessly. Prince Igor or The War with the Cumans, an essay by N. S. Artsybashev.
He quickly delved into the depths of the suitcase, pulled out some papers. He looked through them, sharpened his quill, and sat at the desk.
A concentration appeared that Vazir-Mukhtar hadn’t displayed for a long time. He wrote a dispatch to the shah, tore it into bits, and wrote another.
He demanded the expeditious extradition of Samson Makintsev, son of Yakov, a Russian sergeant-major and a deserter, also known as Samson-Khan.
He no longer thought of Nesselrode, or of England, or remembered Petersburg; he thought of the runaway sergeant-major. His books lay on the floor; the suitcase was open.
He stared at the full stop. His mind wandered: he had had love and fame, his Russian literature and service to the state, and the only thing that was missing now was that fugitive sergeant-major. He had to get him.
He postponed his departure by one day.