The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar
Page 49
Bloodshot eyes and oily black pupils glared in the thousands.
The shops were shut down to avoid the inevitable pillaging along the way.
But when they approached the accursed gates, bolted tightly shut against them, they stopped dead in their tracks.
A standstill. Hands clutching hammers, rocks, rifles, gates fast barred, and a silent house.
The baying ceased.
The Russian flag fluttered lightly on the flagpole.
6
“Listen to my orders,” Griboedov said. “Secure the main gates. Sergeant Kuzmichev, take twenty men and position yourselves by the gates. Sergeant Ivanov and Chibisov, take fifteen men and take up a position on the roof. Keep your rifles at the ready.”
He ran up the narrow staircase to his place.
7
Yakub Markarian craned his neck, peeped from behind the door, and retreated into his room. He sat down on the floor in the middle of his room on his crossed legs. He thought he had begun to lose that habit. He heard the din drawing nearer. Then it all went silent, and suddenly a shrill voice somewhere nearby shrieked out his name.
And at once:
“Allah. Allah.”
And silence.
Yakub Markarian bared his teeth. He was laughing. The gates were strong.
8
Standing in the reception room adjoining his bedroom Griboedov said:
“Why don’t you bring the wine in here, Sasha? Bring a crate, or even two. And the supplies.”
Sashka called the coachman, and they went for a rummage in the food store.
Dressed in his uniform, Dr. Adelung puffed on his cigar. Rustem-Bek and Dadash-Bek, half-dressed, were also there. The room did not have a lived-in look, not a touch of humanity.
“Open this bottle for us and take the rest onto the roof to the Cossacks, will you? They haven’t had breakfast yet. Your health, doctor. This is sparkling.”
Dr. Adelung nodded gloomily and gave Griboedov’s glass a somber clink.
9
And only when the mob saw the Cossacks having breakfast and drinking wine on the rooftop did they come to life. A blond man wearing a caftan thrown over his underwear was taking a break from dragging a heavy basket onto the roof.
Rocks flew at the gates.
The gates shuddered slightly.
The fair-haired one in the caftan bent over and ran along the roof, back into the inner court.
That was the point when the first shot was fired into the heart of the mob. That was the first shot, and everyone heard it.
The blond man kept running, ducking.
And a scream from the mob: a boy wearing a kulidja fell down. There was blood on his face. Everyone saw the blood. He was dragged aside by the blacksmith and the cobbler. He was dying.
The falconet cannons began to speak. Rocks flew back at the roof and at the Cossacks.
The front line of the mob struck the gates. Even without a running start, the hundreds of bodies were knocked senseless and thrown back. The Cossacks hastily finished their wine.
A man on horseback showed up down below. He yelled something and waved his arms. The Cossacks saw him being pulled off the horse and hauled toward the fallen boy. Clubs rose in the air, and the man disappeared beneath them.
The Cossacks on the rooftops wiped their mouths, kneeled, and took aim.
So perished Solomon Melikyants, who had dashed to the Russian legation like a moth to flame.
The blood on the ground, the gates with the bodies hurled against them, a tall, blond man running along the roof, three or four Cossacks suddenly spread out up there—it all happened at once. That was the moment when they saw that the roof of the stables was wider on the left than on the right, where the Cossacks were.
So ten or fifteen men clambered up onto the roof of the stables. The first three were taken out by the Cossacks’ bullets.
“Jihad!”
“Ya-Ali-Salavat!”
“Death to the dogs!”
Hundreds had already scaled the roof of the first courtyard.
The Cossacks retreated into the narrow passage.
10
At half past seven, Zil-li Sultan received a message that the mob had gathered at the Russian legation. The message was brought by the ghulam-pishkhedmet, who had come to assist him in dressing.
Zil-li Sultan was dressing at leisure. A basin was brought for him to wash his face. He washed with gurgling and snorting sounds.
Afterward, he performed the traditional morning prayer.
After the prayer, breakfast was served.
11
The Cossacks kept firing. Men leaped down from the roof, one after another, in the dozens. The courtyard was already full of them.
They scattered in all directions. Nazar-Ali Khan’s lodgings were on the right. Maltsov’s apartment was on the left, on the balakhane, and the doctor’s apartment was downstairs. The Cossacks were straight ahead through the narrow passage. The mob had no idea who was where, and they ran around like blind men. They were looking for the khoja, the eunuch.
Three of Yakub-Sultan’s sarbazes directed them to the second courtyard. Hundreds of men with hammers and daggers stood by Nazar-Ali Khan’s door. The house in which the doctor had been writing in his diary half an hour ago was now being battered like a living being. Sheets of paper flew through the air like eiderdown.
12
Yakub Markarian saw ten heads thrust through his door at once. They were crammed in the opening and were jammed there fast. Blinded by daylight, they could hardly see in the dimness of the room, and their eyes glared past him.
Khoja Yakub rose from the carpet slowly, solemnly. Then he advanced toward the door, and the men retreated. Armed with knives and sledgehammers, they fell back: none of them had ever seen Khoja-Mirza-Yakub. He was tall in stature, white-faced; his eyebrows were black and seemed to be drawn with kohl.
Khoja-Mirza-Yakub stared at the men, whom he was seeing for the first time in his life. Then he bared his teeth; the eunuch was either smiling or grimacing.
“Have you come for me?” he said in his contralto voice. “Have you come to get me?” And took another step forward.
“I am unarmed, take a blow—bzanid!”
A hammer-man slowly swung his sledgehammer and hurled it at him from a distance, staying where he stood. The sledgehammer struck him in the chest. The eunuch reeled.
Only then did they leap into the room; only then did their hands grab at his gown. Took a tight hold of him. The clubs beat him on the head as if the head were a drum, all together.
“Bzanid!” the eunuch shrieked ecstatically.
Aghengher stabbed him in the belly with a knife and punched him in the teeth with his fist. Then he was hit again in the side, and he still shrieked in his fluting voice:
“Bzanid, hit me!” and spat out his teeth.
He was dragged out into the courtyard, where he fell. A boy of about fifteen pulled out a long blade like a butcher’s cleaver and hacked at his neck. An old man stamped brutally on the blunt side of the hatchet. The head rolled to the gateway, like a ball past the goal. They caught it on the other side. Then they also caught an arm with the close-fitting, light blue sleeve on it, and a leg. Those who caught them held them tight and raised them aloft, and immediately their chests were wetted red.
“Ya-Ali-Salavat …”
The thunderous din of the second courtyard being wrecked. They stood on the roofs, ripping off lath and plaster. The axes swung, the rafters shattered; the men fell through, clambered up again, and, two at a time, hurled the lumber into the third courtyard. The bare, dusty poplar tree quivered like a dog.
13
Griboedov yelled:
“Alexander, get back, Alexander!”
He stood on a narrow staircase leading to his chamber. Adelung was behind him; Rustem-Bek and Dadash-Bek peeped from behind Adelung. Fifteen Cossacks knelt downstairs, turning their heads all ways and shooting at the rooftops and the stone fence.
Sashka gaped and listened silently. It was unclear what he was looking at. He went beyond the circle of Cossacks and stood there watching.
Griboedov yelled again:
“Alexander!”
Sashka turned around and looked at Griboedov.
At that moment, the Cossacks fired a volley: ten ragged Persians stood on the flat top of the surrounding stone wall. Two of them dropped and rolled down into the courtyard like sacks of flour. A third one shot at random.
Looking at Griboedov with his clear eyes, Sashka knitted his eyebrows whimsically, twisted his mouth disapprovingly, bent sideways as if stung by a wasp, and fell.
Griboedov spoke to himself.
“They’ve killed Alexander.”
One of the dead Cossacks lay next to Sashka, clasping a rifle. Griboedov quickly ran downstairs and knelt down. He unclasped the dead hands and took the rifle. Then he sprang upstairs.
And began to take aim and to shoot, accurately and rapidly.
Shrieking filled the narrow, dark courtyard. It was crammed with men.
The shots hit their targets.
The crowd retreated. The little courtyard was cleared. Now only those along the walls remained. Sporadic shots were coming from the walls. Then they started to hurl down the beams. One of the beams fell on four Cossacks. They writhed beneath it.
Dr. Adelung touched Griboedov’s shoulder. Griboedov turned around.
“They’ve killed Alexander,” he said to the doctor, and his lip quivered.
“We need to retreat inside,” said Dr. Adelung.
Two more Cossacks had been killed.
14
The first room inside was his bedroom. The bed was still undone—Sashka had never made it.
Ten Cossacks crouched at the windows.
Griboedov peered out.
There were huge numbers of the mob in the little courtyards. In the half-darkness of the little courtyard, they were white with stucco dust. He stepped back from the window and paced the room, kicking the trunk aside with his foot to make more space.
The mob did not know who lived in the third courtyard and were howling:
“Where is the kafir? Where is Vazir-Mukhtar?”
Everyone lined up along the side walls. A small stone hit Griboedov in the head. He did not register the pain. He ran his fingers through his hair, felt something wet, and saw the blood.
Rustem-Bek said hoarsely:
“Fat’h-Ali-shah will send reinforcements. Another ten minutes …”
Griboedov regarded his red, sticky hand with disgust.
“Fuck your … Fat’h-Ali-shah.”
The stones were less frequent.
“We need to retreat into the living-room,” said Dr. Adelung.
He cocked his ears, his eyes raised to the ceiling, thinking he heard some footsteps on the roof. Suddenly the ceiling cracked under a hundred feet. They heard the sharp blows of axes on the roof. They moved to the parlor.
15
The doctor drew his head into his shoulders and looked ahead at the parlor door. His face was like a bulldog’s muzzle. He was quite unruffled. They were stomping around on the roof like dancers. The cracking was the stripping-away of the lath.
“They are taking over the staircase,” he said, peering closely.
The door from the courtyard to the bedroom was thickly crammed with men, hundreds of them trying to get through at once, none succeeding.
Without looking at anyone, Dr. Adelung took one step backward and pulled his tiny little foil out of its sheath.
Griboedov paced the room, his arms crossed determinedly on his chest. The doctor ran to the bedroom, his foil in his hand.
Griboedov looked at him.
He saw the doctor reach the door, at which he made a sudden lunge. He immediately fell back. Something had happened there. The doorway was clear—they had retreated.
“Well done.”
The doctor was ripping the curtain from the bedroom window. His left arm was missing—there was only a stump. He bandaged it quickly with a strip of fabric. Then he sprang onto the windowsill and leaped out. Griboedov saw a fleeting movement: Dr. Adelung launching his offensive, his little sword in the air.
“Bravely done,” said Griboedov. “What a man!”
Now there was neither Sashka nor Dr. Adelung.
The stucco rained onto his head. The beams gave way—he had just enough time to leap out of the way. The mob was jumping down from above. A sarbaz struck him in the chest with a scimitar once, twice. He also heard Rustem-Bek shrieking as he was being carved up close by.
16
A unit of sarbazes showed up at the legation gate. There were a hundred of them, under the command of Major Hajji-Bek; they had been sent by Zil-li Sultan. The sarbazes stood for a while, took a look around, and mingled with the mob. Three hours had passed since the mob first appeared. The street was now much wider than before, on account of the ruins. As their order was to influence the mob by verbal persuasion, the sarbazes had come unarmed.
17
The floor and the walls shook; time stood still.
Gradually he began to interpret the character of the various crashes and noises: the barking of the falconet cannons, the sharp, bright clatter of the torn-off lath, the deep, musical din of the hurled beams.
The human noises were the most menacing. The design on the carpet, from which he did not lift himself, measured the sounds like a metronome. As soon as he raised his head from the carpet, he felt faint.
He pressed himself so tightly to the carpet that he could feel the banknotes that he had stuffed into his chest pocket. The banknotes were the one thing he could rely on among everything else that was left in the courtyard or in the room.
MALTSOV’S PRAYER
It’s not my fault, Dear Lord, it’s not my fault! He is to blame. I am young. If I am to die, don’t let me suffer, no suffering, please! Oh, I am being dishonest with you; I am deceiving you, Dear Lord, don’t listen to me: I want to live. They are howling again. Are they approaching my door? Let everything perish, if necessary, Lord, let everybody perish. Just save, protect, and have mercy on me. My whole life is ahead of me. I’ll go away to Petersburg, I will never come back here again, I promise, Dear Lord! I’ll do anything to get out of here. I’ll give my fortune to the poor, only deliver me from here, I beg you!
There were moments of silence in the thunder—and then the din ceased at last. And he heard the strangest sounds.
Objects, unidentifiable, were being dragged along past the window. There were curious slumping noises, and he heard the regular shouts of men seemingly at work, like those the Persians made when they were unloading goods. They heaved, hollered, hurled, and then came those strange slumping sounds again. The swooshing noises came right up close to the window. Was it light planks that were falling? But when they were being laid down, they did not clatter, but rather made that soft thumping sound, and then again the heaving sounds came from behind the window, very close by.
He dragged himself toward the window, swept the curtain aside, and wondered if they could see him from the courtyard. But he couldn’t get these sounds out of his mind. He dragged himself a little closer to the window and peered out with one eye.
The black beams hung loose up above. He stared for quite a long time: the loose beams came from the roof where Adelung’s and his apartment used to be, from the opposite side of the courtyard, not too close and on the second floor level. The soft sounds right at his ear did not stop, but he could see nothing but the beams. He raised himself a little higher on his arms.
A Persian was running with thick bundles of files in his arms, sheets of paper were whirling in the wind, a huge mirror was being dragged away, a little boy was running with a heap of uniforms, and the white sleeve of a shirt was conspicuous in the heap. The boy stoppe
d and peered down: something had fallen out of the clothes.
Maltsov squinted, stared for a moment, and dropped noiselessly, like a sack, onto the floor.
All of them were naked. A yellowish back lay at the level of his feet. It was a high pyramid of naked corpses. An old man with a knife, very close to him, busied himself over the dead. Three sarbazes were beating the heap of corpses with planks of wood, leveling the pile.
The dead men lay with their arms around each other, almost obscenely.
The man now without kith or kin lay on the carpet for an hour, for two hours, three. He was not really asleep, but not awake either. He was like a somnolent fish.
Then, he had no notion when, there was some commotion by the door, it was unlocked, and somebody spoke in the adjoining room. Maltsov got up at once, like an automaton. He felt for the banknotes once again.
An unfamiliar serheng entered the room without noticing him. Then he saw him and stepped back.
Maltsov realized at once: it was good that he had got up. The serheng wouldn’t have seen him lying down. A man on the ground could accidentally be hit on the head with a broadsword.
He said to the serheng in French:
“I demand to be immediately …”
The serheng stood there listening.
Then Maltsov turned his parched tongue in his mouth and yelped with all his might:
“I demand that you should immediately inform His Highness Prince Zil-li Sultan …”
His voice was hoarse and barely audible. He was whispering instead of yelling.