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.
4
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 liv
ed 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
The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar Page 43