by Zoya Pirzad
I jumped up. ‘I’ll go help Nina set the table.’
In the kitchen, Nina asked me, ‘All by your lonesome?’ She looked to the doorway and when she was sure that Mother and Alice were not behind me, she giggled and said in a low voice, ‘Actually, I brought Violette with me to Abadan because...’ She looked again toward the door and almost whispered, ‘Because Tigran had a terrible crush on Violette.’
My jaw dropped and I looked wide-eyed at Nina. ‘What?’
I pictured skinny, quiet, and shy Tigran. He wore glasses and was always studying. Always top of his class. He did not go to the movies or to clubs, and he did not have any friends. His hobby was tinkering with electronics. Mother had often said, ‘Isn’t that amazing? Such a well-behaved boy from such frivolous parents!’
Nina was explaining. ‘When Violette got divorced and returned to live with her mother, Garnik’s aunt, Tigran was also living there. After a few days I saw that the boy had gone all loopy. He either listened to love songs or would sit in a corner and stare at Violette, like a dog before its master. And don’t imagine that Violette was flirting or anything like that. She’s not like that at all! I’m a woman, too, and no idiot. I know what’s what. No. It was not Violette’s fault at all. It’s no sin for a girl to be pretty. Her looks set her apart from other women, so people gossip about her. That’s why I said Europe would be good for her. Over there the streets are full of blond-haired, fair-skinned women. I did some investigating, and the Dutchman’s assignment is almost over. Let’s see what we can do tonight.’ She took the salad out of the fridge. ‘Maybe we’ll be able to accomplish a good deed.’ And she laughed from the bottom of her heart.
The twins ran into the kitchen. Armineh said with pouting face, ‘Uncle Garnik bought Sophie...’
Arsineh’s lip curled, ‘...bought Sophie a hula-hoop.’
Then the two of them started in. ‘Uncle Garnik said that a hula-hoop is not bad for the back.’
‘It’s not bad at all.’
‘All the kids have hula-hoops.’
‘Please get one for us.’
‘Please, please get one!’
Garnik shouted from the living room. ‘I’ll get you one, not to worry. Come on out here, now. The rabbits have joined the party.’
‘Yippee!’ and ‘Fantastic!’ shouted the twins, as they ran out.
Nina picked up the fruit bowl. ‘I don’t know who started circulating the rumor that hula-hoops cause backaches. No one spins a hula-hoop twenty-four hours a day. Relax. They’ll play for two or three days and then toss it in a corner of the yard. Can you bring the dessert plates?’ And she headed for the living room.
Violette was sitting on the carpet, cradling one of the bunnies. Her tight black skirt had hitched up, and her white un-stockinged knees were on display. Sophie and the twins were sitting around her, each with a bunny in their arms. Armen was petting Violette’s bunny.
Mother was staring straight at the empty drink glasses. Alice had practically turned her back on Mother and was staring at the bare wall of the room. Her crossed leg was kicking rapidly up and down. Mother and Alice are fighting, I said to myself. Garnik was asking Artoush’s advice about where to install the new air conditioner. Before coming over, I had warned Artoush, ‘Don’t get into any political arguments.’
I was helping Nina set the dinner table when the bell rang.
It was the tall Dutchman, with very short, straight hair, the color of straw. His freckled face was a tad reddened, most probably from sunbathing. He shook hands firmly with each of us, one by one, even the children. He spoke in Persian, ‘Greetings! I am Joop Hansen. I am very pleased to meet you, sir.’
Violette, sitting there on the floor, raised her rabbit-less hand slightly and said, ‘See what a lovely rabbit I have?’
In order to shake hands with Violette, Joop Hansen practically knelt on the ground. ‘Exceedingly pretty is the rabbit.’
Violette only smiled. The Dutchman’s somewhat formal, somewhat broken Persian did not surprise her nor make her laugh. I remembered that Nina had said, ‘Garnik’s niece reminds me of you.’ I thought Nina had lost her mind. I did not see the slightest resemblance between myself and this woman, neither in her looks, nor in her behavior. Though I would not have minded being like her at all, in either department.
Joop Hansen had a pleasant manner and smiling face. He asked Artoush not to call him Mr. Hansen, and to speak Persian rather than English, saying, ‘For speaking Persian I am most eager.’ At the dinner table, when he offered the platter of pilaf to my sister, Mother and Alice both smiled for the first time that night.
Alice thanked him and explained she was eating salad. Joop raised his blond eyebrows. ‘Why? Do you not like Lobiya pilof?’
‘I like it,’ said Alice, ‘but...’
Joop set the platter down on the table, picked up the salad bowl and offered it to Alice. ‘Ahh! You must be on a diet.’ He pushed his chair back and looked Alice over carefully. ‘You don’t need any diet. To my considered opinion, you are very, very excellent as you are.’
When we returned home, Artoush picked my dress off the bed, where I had tossed it. He turned it over this way and that, and said, ‘If I had not seen it on you tonight, I’d have thought it belonged to the twins.’
I snatched the dress from him and hung it up in the wardrobe. ‘Don’t joke. Go ahead and say I’m too thin.’
I heard him say behind me, ‘To my considered opinion, you are very, very excellent as you are.’ Then he laughed aloud. ‘At that instant you could have lit a score of 100-watt bulbs with the light in your sister’s eyes.’
I turned down the covers on my side of the bed. ‘Violette has a nice figure, no?’
Artoush turned down the covers on his side. ‘Does she have a nice figure? I didn’t notice.’ He began humming Nat King Cole’s ‘Mona Lisa.’
‘Thank you for not arguing politics with Garnik.’
He made a face at me and, mimicking Joop, said, ‘Your wish is my command.’
I tried not to laugh out loud and wondered why people thought of Artoush as grumpy. I asked him, ‘Are you coming to the 24th of April ceremonies on Thursday?’
He closed his eyes and yawned. The only thing he said was, ‘Hmm...’ which surely meant no. I turned out the night lamp.
21
The auditorium at the school was full. Wreaths of white gladioli with wide black ribbons were pinned to the walls at regular intervals. Mother was grumbling at Alice. ‘I told you we’d be late. But no, off you go to the hairdresser on a day of mourning! Would the sky have fallen if you’d waited a day?’
I pointed Nina out to Mother – she was waving to us from the second row, where she had saved us seats. We threaded in between the chairs and through the people, saying excuse me a dozen times until we finally made our way to Nina.
Alice – half-seated, half-standing – looked over her shoulder to scan the entire hall. She began to report who was there and what they were wearing. Nina handed me the evening’s program and asked, ‘What kept you?’
Mother answered, ‘Lady Alice went to the hairdresser.’ Again she harrumphed: ‘The hairdresser on the Day of Mourning!’
Nina whispered in my ear. ‘You never know, maybe the Day of Mourning will turn out to be her lucky day!’ She giggled and looked around her. ‘But looks like only old hags and geezers have turned out. Did you leave the kids with Artoush?’ (She did not ask why Artoush had not come. There was no need to explain.) ‘Garnik insisted that Sophie must come too.’ Dropping her voice an octave or two, she mimicked him. ‘ “Children must learn from this age what our people have suffered.” But the little squirt threw such a tantrum that her Papa eventually gave in. I left Violette at home, too, on the pretext that Sophie not be all alone. What would Violette do here, anyway? She’d be bored. To be honest, if Garnik were not the Master of Ceremonies, I would not have come myself. So, tell me, what’s new?’
Before I could say nothing was new, she began exchanging pl
easantries with a woman sitting in the row in front of us, whose husband was the first speaker of the evening. I read the program:
*
Talk by Robert Madatian on the 24th April Mass Murders
*
Report of the Church & School Association on the construction of a memorial
Intermission
*
Reminiscences of Mrs Khatoun Yeremian, eyewitness to those terrible events.
The lights in the auditorium dimmed and Garnik came up to the microphone. He gave the welcome and then Madatian began his speech. I remembered the 24th of April commemoration many years ago, when Artoush and Madatian got in a heated argument. Things would have gotten out of hand if not for Garnik, who diffused the situation with joking banter and pleasantries. After that incident, I had told Artoush time and time again, ‘Why insist on political differences on this of all days? It makes no difference whether one is a leftist or a conservative. All these people got massacred! Even if you’re not Armenian, you have to feel something, you have to grieve, and you should take part in the commemoration.’ Artoush would always reply, ‘I do feel grief, but I will not take part.’
I was listening and not listening to Madatian’s talk. We heard the same things over again every year – some statistics and some slogans, that’s about it. Nina looked over at me several times and then looked pointedly in the direction of Mrs. Madatian. She put her finger to her lips to say that she must keep quiet, since it would surely offend the lady if anyone talked during her husband’s speech. Mrs. Madatian turned around several times to stare down the people behind her, who apparently did not know the speaker was her husband, and that they must keep quiet. Everyone was whispering to their neighbor and fanning themselves with the program. I fanned myself too, and tried to remember whether I had given the twins their Haliborange that morning. I had, I now remembered, because they had complained:
‘But what about Armen?’
‘But how long will we have to take this syrup?’
‘But if we take it to keep from catching cold, why doesn’t Armen?’
Mr. Madatian waved his notes excitedly and after a few more long sentences, concluded his talk. I clapped along with everyone else. A few people sitting near Mrs. Madatian congratulated her. She smiled and thanked them, as if she herself had given the talk, and when her eyes lit upon me, she turned away.
Mother was exchanging greetings with a woman a few rows behind us. Alice leaned over to me across Mother, who was sitting between us. ‘Guess who’s here? Mrs. Nurollahi! Sitting in the back of the auditorium.’ I was about to turn around, when Garnik came on stage and began to read the report about the construction of the memorial. On one of the occasions I was summoned to the school over Armen’s trouble-making, Vazgen Hairapetian had shown me the sketch of the memorial monument. It was a large rectangle made out of grey stone. Carved on one side was a woman carrying her lifeless child in her arms, and engraved on the other side were the dates of the genocide. Garnik announced that the monument was nearly completed and would be erected in the school yard the following year, in front of the door to the church. He then thanked all those present for their financial and moral support and announced a fifteen-minute intermission.
Mother said she was going to stay in the auditorium to chat with her friend, who had just come back from Julfa, and was sitting a few rows behind us. Nina said she was going backstage to see what Garnik was doing, and took Alice along with her. I headed over to one of the exits that opened on to the schoolyard. Just in front of the doors, I stood aside to let a man carrying some sandwiches and Pepsis pass by. In one corner of the school yard, a good-sized crowd was mingling around the buffet table. I exchanged greetings with several acquaintances, and then saw Manya coming toward me.
As usual, she was jumpy and excited. The white collar of her blouse was turned up on one side. I said hello and straightened her collar. ‘The wreaths and the ribbons are beautiful. I’m sure they were your idea.’
She pushed aside a sweep of hair from her perspiring forehead. ‘Did you see the black armbands on the ushers?’
Of course I had seen them. The night before, Armen took the telephone into his bedroom, locked the door and talked for half an hour. He then came out to the kitchen, where Mother and I were washing vegetables, and announced that he had decided to be one of the ushers for tomorrow’s program. And that Miss Manya had said the ushers need to wear black armbands. ‘Again you have to wait until the last minute?’ I chided. ‘Where am I going to find black cloth in the middle of the night?’ His grandmother came to the rescue. If there was anything her various trunks and boxes didn’t lack, it was black cloth. I told Manya, ‘Everything turned out splendidly. Thank you for all the trouble you’ve gone to! The next program must be the end-of-year celebration?’
She said hello to someone passing by and turned back to me. ‘Yep. We’ll hold the end-of-year celebration here in the yard. I’m building a stage for it.’ She gestured toward the end of the yard, which was full of bricks and beams and planks. Then she put her hand on my shoulder, which was not an easy reach, considering how much shorter Manya was than me. ‘We’ll start practicing in a day or two.’ Her hand slid down my shoulder to my arm. ‘I have a neat idea for the twins. Vazgen found a pretty poem by...I forget who it’s by, but the poem is called “The Four Seasons.” I thought it would be cute if the twins take turns reading the parts of the seasons. Armineh as spring and fall, and Arsineh as summer and winter. That way they’ll have time to go backstage and change costumes for each season. And as for the costumes...’
I spotted Armen standing by one of the auditorium doors, talking with Emily and two high-school-age boys. With his navy blue pants and white shirt he looked more like a young man than like my little boy. I wondered if Emily had come with her father and hoped Alice would not see Emile here. I said to Manya, ‘As for the costumes, it will naturally be me who should sew them?’
She let go of my arm and covered her mouth to hide her tittering. ‘Yep. That’s why I was looking for you. It won’t be difficult. Four simple long dresses with wide sleeves. But the colors should all be different. Pink for spring, for example, green for summer, orange for fall, and white for winter.’
On the other side of the yard I spotted Emile talking to the priest and his wife. Fretting again, I hoped that Alice would not show up in the vicinity. Then I remembered that, fortunately, the two of them had not been introduced and would not recognize one another. ‘I could even sew something on each dress particular to the season. Like flowers for spring, wheat stalks for fall.’ Emily’s headband fell on the ground. Armen bent over before the two other boys could and picked it up. I lost sight of Emile in the crowd.
‘What a great idea!’ agreed Manya. ‘By the way, Vazgen has finished the translation of Little Lord Fauntleroy and...’ She stopped mid-sentence, staring directly behind me. What was she looking at with that vacant grin? When I turned my head around to see, Emile shifted his gaze from Manya and greeted me. Both of them now stood looking at me. I introduced them and they shook hands. Manya straightened the collar that I had already straightened for her.
‘You were saying, about the translation...’ I prodded Manya.
‘What?’ She seemed to have just woken from a trance. ‘Oh, yes, the book. The translation is finished. I’ll give it to the kids to bring to you. Please read it soon and return it. We intend to print it before the end-of-year celebration.’
Emile said, ‘I guess you are the one who planned the program tonight? Congratulations. It was very interesting.’
Manya blushed and called out ‘Coming!’ to one of the ushers who was calling to her. Then she shook hands with Emile, saying, ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance,’ and left. Was it my silly imagination or did they hold hands for noticeably longer than was necessary?
I looked around. Fortunately Alice and Mother were nowhere to be seen. Emile was wearing a white suit with very thin blue stripes. His tie was black.
&
nbsp; He was watching the people around us talking, smoking, and having drinks and sandwiches. He said his mother had not come, so he came to save Emily from being all alone. Well, and out of some curiosity, too. ‘I wanted to get acquainted with the Armenians of Abadan.’ He turned around to face me. ‘If all the women here are like you and Miss Manya, Abadan is not such a bad place.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘But between the two of us, the program was a bit tedious.’ He said he was thinking about going back home and returning later to fetch Emily. I was happy that he was leaving, and in order to keep him from coming back and meeting Alice, I insisted that we would give Emily a ride home. He thanked me, said goodbye and left.
I looked through the crowd trying to find Mrs. Nurollahi. I did not, and so returned to the auditorium. Maybe Alice was mistaken. Why should Mrs. Nurollahi come? She did not speak Armenian, and the ceremonies for the 24th of April were not particularly interesting.
The crowd gradually re-assembled in the auditorium. Mother was in a good mood after chatting with her friend from Julfa. Nina was making arrangements to invite Mrs. Madatian for dinner, and as soon as I sat down, Alice said, ‘Shushanik and Janette must have made a killing! All the lovely ladies have new clothes on, head to toe. All, it seems, in black.’ Shushanik and Janette were two of the most famous dressmakers in Abadan.
Garnik came to the microphone and waited for the room to quiet down. Then, in a tone at odds with his usual cheerful, laughing voice, he introduced Khatoun Yeremian, from the city of Van, now resident in Tehran. She had been an eyewitness of those bitter times and was now, for a few days, a most welcome visitor in Abadan. He gestured toward the back of the stage. We all looked in that direction. One of the usher boys came and placed an armchair in front of the microphone. An elderly woman, walking with short, shuffling steps and leaning on the arm of another usher, came onto the stage. She was frail and thin, wearing a black ankle-length skirt, with a large black shawl covering her white hair. With the boys’ help, she sat down. Garnik lowered the microphone for her. The woman laid her bony hand on the heads of each usher and mumbled something sotto voce, which I took to be a prayer of benediction.