Two children buried themselves in her strong knees, tightening the silk covering her Rubens thighs. She was strung with beads, heavy earrings hung in her ears, and rings as thick as worms glistened on her hands.
The old parent stared at her, blinkingly, not without some apprehension. The parent’s shirt was new and clean.
“Susanna,” the parent kept saying sweetly, as they say to a fat cat that is nothing but trouble, “Susanna, my child.”
The daughter was silent. The Cossacks leered at her.
Griboedov was making court.
“Do you recognize Mr. Johann Schäffer to be your father?” he asked the daughter in German.
“Aber, um Gottes Willen, nein,”1 replied the daughter in a deep voice, as thick as cream.
The parent blinked with his tiny, reddish eyes.
“What is your maiden name?”
“Can’t remember,” replied the daughter.
“Sie hat schon den Familiennamen vergessen,”2 the parent responded bitterly.
“How long have you been married?”
“Six years and three months,” the daughter replied precisely.
“Are you happy in your marriage?”
“Thank God.”
“Did your parent ever abuse you?”
“Excellenz,” said the affronted parent, and pressed his hand to his chest, “she was treated like a doll, wie’n Püppchen.”
“Püppchen?” asked the daughter, and pushed the children away. “Püppchen?” she asked, and leaned forward.
The parent retreated.
“Go milk the cows?” screamed the daughter, “Go reap the corn?” she advanced at the old man, “Go make hay? Susanna here, Susanna—there! Shame on you Vater, how dare you look me in the eye! You are a cruel, unscrupulous man!”
“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?”
4
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.
5
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.
6
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.
7
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.
8
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 purp
ose, 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.
9
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:
The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar Page 38