“What can I…” he began.
“What can you do?” his wife spread her hands wide. “Allah sees that you haven’t lifted a finger to help either your son or your grandsons! Take Abdullaev, you must have seen how much he did; he set his children up for life! And Omarov? His wife wears five kilograms of gold on each hand!”
She sank onto an armchair and buried her face in her hands.
“Farida…” Makhmud Tagirovich tried again.
“And look at your brother.” She heaved in her chair. “He’s ten years younger than you, he doesn’t have your education, and he’s going to be factory director. You need to take a page from his book.”
“I have a good job.” Makhmud Tagirovich was starting to get angry.
“And what’s it gotten you? Everyone there thinks you’re an idiot, I’ll tell you straight out,” Farida said, vicious now. “Normal people make money and they help their relatives out. You’ve had so many opportunities, and I’ve given you such good advice, but do you ever listen?”
“Farida, what’s all this ai-ui?” Makhmud Tagirovich was squirming.
“I haven’t even gotten started.” His wife continued, wagging her finger. “I’ve got plenty more to say. What are you up to, going to Pakhriman’s again?”
“I go where I want to,” sniffed Makhmud Tagirovich.
“So go, have a good time, do your scribbling while your wife toils away,” she said, glancing at his briefcase and gathering up her purse.
Taking advantage of the pause, Makhmud Tagirovich ducked into his room and lurked there until he heard the door slam.
4
Makhmud Tagirovich liked to remind his grandchildren that his own grandfather, who came from a family of Khunzakh khans, had in his childhood by some miracle escaped death at the hands of Imam Shamil. He was taken prisoner, ransomed, and after undergoing a multitude of adventures and peregrinations, had ended up in Petersburg high society, where he had even served as an officer guarding the imperial quarters. Makhmud Tagirovich’s uncles, and there were eight of them, had perished in various distant parts of the crumbling empire, and beyond its borders as well.
One of them had given his life on the battlefield in the Russo-Japanese War, another during the First World War, and another at the hands of hostile Bolsheviks during the Civil War, but all of them had earned medals for valor in battle. Makhmud Tagirovich’s father was the youngest, so they spirited him away to a distant Khunzakh village. There he stayed until 1931, when he left to enroll in the newly opened Makhachkala Pedagogical Institute. Though he was expelled shortly thereafter for being the son of a White general.
Returning to his quiet village, he spent his youth copying out the Koran and working on translations, until one day, overcome by a wave of Red Romanticism, he hammered out a poem of repentance, in Avar, in which he renounced his unfortunate past.
In mannered lines, abounding in Arabisms, the poet elaborately recounted the sad fates of the simple Khunzakh people, who had bent their backs for centuries on end under the yoke of the treacherous khans and their plotting wives. A recurrent figure in the poem was a famous epic hero from free Gidatl who had led the khan’s young sons with him into the fire.
The poem was well received; it circulated widely, and Makhmud Tagirovich’s father was summoned to Khunzakh and given a position there as a schoolteacher. Within two years he had managed to become the son-in-law of the collective farm’s chief agronomist. Shortly thereafter he was named director of the school, and then, after serving in the Great Patriotic War, joined the Ministry of Education in Makhachkala. By that point Makhmud Tagirovich’s father had left his poetic endeavors behind him.
Makhmud Tagirovich himself was a late baby; by the time he was born his three elder sisters were already in high school. He grew up in a private apartment in the city, with local celebrities always visiting, including poets in kirza boots bearing pandurs. Before long his father became bored with his mother, who yielded her place to various enchantresses from the nomenklatura. When Makhmud Tagirovich was eight, his mother died in Khunzakh under mysterious circumstances after celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Dagestan. It was said that she had eaten too much greasy meat with khinkal, had washed them down with ice water, and had died from a swollen intestine.
Within a year Makhmud was blessed with a stepmother, the daughter of the Oblast Committee Secretary, and his sixty-year-old father came into possession of a personal car and, soon afterward, a new baby. Left to his own devices, Makhmud Tagirovich quickly developed a taste for alcohol and for writing in his diary. He stocked up on notebooks in which he copied down quotations from Marx, Engels, Saint-Simon, Gorky, and Gamzatov, as well as jotting observations from his own life experience.
Alone now in the house, he took a stack of these notebooks out of the cupboard, picked one of the thicker ones, opened it to the middle and began to read greedily:
16 MAY 1980
For some reason I woke up today not in my bedroom, but in the living room. I recalled that last night after seeing my parents off to Czechoslovakia, I immediately called Rustam and Volodya and invited them over. Rustam arrived first with some dry wine and a bottle of vodka, and I got out some cognac. We needed to warm up before our expedition to Irka’s and Vadik’s, who celebrated their three-year anniversary (of living together) the day before yesterday.
Turns out, Tonya had also been invited to the party; I’d met her in April on the trip to Baku. Rustam started in immediately on how he’d hooked up with her while his plump little Nadya was away in Saratov. “Tonya isn’t my type, though,” he told me. “Tonya is for guys like you, Makhmud. Intellectual conversations give me a stomach ache.”
I was flattered by Rustam’s allusion to my intellectual superiority, though at the same time I felt guilty about being so vain. We had almost finished the booze by the time Volodya showed up. He was feeling blue. I proposed taking the tape recorder and some cassettes and going directly to Irka’s and Vadik’s.
So we left. We flagged down a ride at the Komsomolets Movie Theater and headed to Kirov Street. And at that point I realized that I’d completely forgotten to bring a gift. But it was too late, so I figured that if it came up I’d just give them money or drop hints about a surprise still in the works.
Ira met us wearing an apron. Vadik had gone to the neighbors to borrow a corkscrew. The table was already set, and they’d put out a lot of appetizers. Various people I’d never met began to show up. As it turned out, they were relatives of Ira’s from Piatigorsk. Volodya immediately ducked into a corner and started to leaf through a photo album, but I made a point of mingling. One of the guests from Piatigorsk, who was much older than everyone else, said that my name was very Dagestani. I told him that it had been the name of a great Avar poet from Kakhabroso. Then Ira came out and started pressing me to recite something from Makhmud in Avar. I wasn’t about to play coy, but I announced that I would wait until everyone was there. Meaning, Tonya.
Finally she arrived. You couldn’t call her beautiful, but she has a nice, pretty face. She went out onto the balcony first thing, probably to have a smoke. Later, when we sat down at the table, Tonya sat right across from me and asked, “So, Makhmud, are you going to be gallant and serve me some wine?”
“Don’t forget you already have a suitor—he’s on your right,” said Rustam, sitting down on her right there and then.
That bugged me, but I didn’t say anything, just proposed a toast to Ira and Vadik:
“Today someone mentioned my namesake, the poet Makhmud from Kakhabroso. Maybe some of you here don’t know his story. He was the son of a coal miner who didn’t approve of his son’s poetic inclinations. But Makhmud couldn’t help writing, because he was in love with the beautiful Mui. And she loved him too. But Mui’s people, who were rich and of high birth, refused to let her marry the poor Makhmud.
“Meanwhile his fame thundered across all the towns and villages of Avaria; wherever he went, crowds would ga
ther to hear him. The future last imam of Chechnya and Dagestan, the counterrevolutionary Nazhmudin Gotsinsky, was enraged that Makhmud wouldn’t write poems to order.
“‘Why won’t you write about our spiritual leaders?’ he asked Makhmud.
“‘Because I’m not in love with them,’ answered Makhmud.
“Then Gotsinsky commanded that Makhmud be given a hundred lashes with the knout, and Makhmud went lame in the right foot. After the whipping he was forced to go live in the Transcaucasus, but when he finally came back to his motherland, he was welcomed like royalty, because everyone loved him; they knew his poetry by heart.
“But Mui was already married by then. So they found a new woman for the disconsolate Makhmud, a woman who liked to sing, and he married her, but before long he left her and went away to work in Baku. There he learned that Mui’s husband had died, and the flame of hope was kindled in him. The poet, plotting beforehand with his beloved, planned to abduct her so they could elope, but Mui backed out at the last moment, afraid that her relatives would murder Makhmud in revenge.
“To drown his sorrows, the poet enlisted in the Dagestan cavalry. One day, somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, he was pursuing an Austrian soldier. The terrified Austrian tried to take shelter in a church, and Makhmud burst inside after him. There he found himself standing in front of Michelangelo’s Madonna with Child, and was struck with the Virgin Mary’s likeness to his beloved Mui. ‘I lost my mind,’ he later said, ‘I stood there in front of the painting and couldn’t keep silent. I asked some people there, “Who is that woman on the wall? Why does everyone have her portrait in their house?”’
‘“It’s Mariam, who, though a virgin, gave birth to the Prophet Jesus.”’
“Well, that’s a translation, of course. Anyway, the thunderstruck Makhmud went on to pen a long narrative poem, Mariam. Of course he never saw his own Mariam-Mui again, she died while he was away at war.
“Makhmud himself didn’t have long to live. He was felled by jealous rivals, who shot him in the back of the head after the last in a series of brilliant victories at poetry competitions.
“They say that at the exact moment he was shot, Makhmud was reciting a poem about his own death: ‘A mind of gold in a silver skull; I did not suspect that I would die in vain.’ That’s my own translation, by the way. But we are now near the end of my toast. Dear Irina and Vadim, cherish and preserve what was not given to Mui and Makhmud: keep your dear one at your side…”
While I was pronouncing this long toast, everyone was silent. I think I made an impression. They began to shout: “Makhmud! You need to be the tamada at weddings!” And Tonya’s fiery eyes burned into me. I joked, laughed, I was on top of the world, but I also didn’t neglect to drink. Volodya and I managed to down a half-liter of vodka in only thirty minutes.
We went into the next room to dance. I danced with Tonya, then with some little old lady, and then with Tonya again. She was clearly interested. She asked me to recite from Makhmud in Avar. I was already tipsy, but my recitation was brilliant, and everyone applauded. Even Rustam and Volodya were amazed.
Tonya asked about my career plans. I answered that I wanted to go into industry, to work for the greater good of communism, and to eradicate the flaws that so abounded around us. Then, after I told her the story I’ve already described above, about taxi drivers who double as pushers and capitalist landladies making money off other people’s misfortunes, Tonya told me that she sometimes felt like eradicating herself, that that would be even simpler. She often had thoughts of suicide, she said. I scolded her a bit, saying that this was a sign of weakness.
Later, while everyone was dancing, I downed a couple more shots on my way to the john. Had some greens from the hors d’oeuvre table. By that point Volodya could barely talk, and was having trouble keeping vertical.
It was already past nine when the party started to break up. We said our good-byes and left, caught a ride, and came home to my place to keep things going. As if just to spite us, all the stores in the neighborhood were closed.
Makhmud Tagirovich scratched at the yellow wart on his right cheek, put aside the notebook, shook his head, and looked outside onto the balcony. On the street, shouts could be heard, and a siren wailed. Always something. Makhmud sighed, went back into his room, and shut the PVC door tight to keep out the noise. It was quiet. Felt good.
5
Makhmud Tagirovich’s wife worked for a government agency. Here is what her working day was like: she and her colleagues would arrive around ten in the morning. They would chatter, put on their makeup, primp. Eleven was teatime. The women brought in candy and baked goods, and served them to the men.
At noon they went to their desks. The younger employees went online, and the older ones gossiped. At one they prepared for lunch. They got out thermoses of soup, cellophane-wrapped cold cuts, pies, fresh vegetables. They locked the office from inside and set everything out on the table with elaborate care. The entire department ate together; over lunch they discussed the latest news, taking their time. Then they cleared the table, put the lunch things away. Occasionally in the afternoon they would have to take care of some people who stopped by with official business, but for the most part they just sat around talking among themselves. Around five they had tea again, after which they went home for the day.
Farida arrived later than usual, after lunch. It was noisy in the office. No one was at their desk; everyone was upset. At that time of the day Roza always took up her position at the window, got out a bottle of nail polish, and touched up her toenails, but today she looked a bit disheveled, and was standing in the middle of the room, shouting:
“Let’s try calling him at home again!”
It turned out that none of their superiors had showed up to work. Not the director, not his deputy. Rumor had it that none of the other government offices and agencies were open either. After the Khanmagomedovs’ wedding yesterday, all the decision-makers had disappeared.
Roza was yelling something about how they’d all been shot by the “goddamned beards.”
Faizulla Gadzhievich, a thin, hoarse-voiced man, claimed that that was all nonsense, and kept repeating, over and over, “I’m sure it’s just that they’ve had to call an urgent meeting.”
Zarema Elmurazovna stood with her fists pressed against her quivering, full bosom, exclaiming, “My daughter told me that they loaded everyone on a motorboat and hauled them off to Tyulen Island.”
“But why?” asked Faizulla Gadzhievich.
“So they’ll die of starvation out there!”
An anxious-looking, cow-eyed young man appeared in the doorway: “Has Uncle Alikhan showed up yet?”
“Now where exactly would he come from, Shamil?” lamented Zarema Elmurazovna.
“He might still come. They can’t all have been devoured by the shaitan,” mumbled Faizulla Gadzhievich.
Stricken, Farida sank back onto her chair: “So should we just go home, or what?”
“No, let’s have some tea,” proposed Roza.
The young man, which is to say Shamil, declined their invitation and left. The last couple of days had gone by in a kind of strange, blind fog. He had gone from one house to another, from one set of relatives to another. He had helped them haul their belongings around town, bumped along in stuffy vans, had called at various offices. He had even made a quick run to the airport, only to find it deserted, with its windows blocked with plywood and the entrance locked and dead-bolted. The ticket counters were closed; all the planes had flown off to Moscow, and it was highly unlikely they would ever come back.
His mother spent days in a mute stupor. Then she admitted that someone had been sending threats to her school’s director, and that final exams had been canceled. She started packing for the village.
The Internet had been down for days, and Shamil spent practically every night in front of the TV, mindlessly flipping though the channels. It was impossible to make sense of anything on the news. Some stations simply continued
their normal programming, making no mention of the crisis; on others he occasionally heard the dry phrase “Operation Expulsion;” finally he came upon some reports from the Stavropol border. They showed guard towers, armed soldiers, barbed wire, women screaming incoherently, and nothing more.
Shamil clicked over to Channel One for the nth time. A heavily made-up, disingenuous-looking face appeared on the screen, with multicolored curls flowing every which way down her cheeks. The singer Sabina Gadzhieva jerked her neck desperately from side to side, as though she wanted her head to fly off, and jammed a microphone close to her gaping lips, which were generously smeared with wine-colored lipstick. Shamil cursed, glanced out of the room, and felt his way to the veranda. His mother’s voice called to him in the darkness. She seemed to be standing in the doorway to her bedroom, fully dressed. Though it was hard to tell.
“What’s all this about you and Madina?” she asked.
“We have to call it off,” Shamil flapped his hand at her, and offered no further elaboration.
His mother reached out and touched his head gently. Shamil backed away from her and went back to his room. Nothing would surprise him. He grabbed the remote and again went through all the available channels. He came across an explicit, adults-only cartoon, a tedious action movie, and a stultifying women’s talk show. Finally he gave up, turned off the TV, and flopped down on the couch, which had been his father’s.
Dreams came not right away, but in phases. First Shamil heard ragged noises and sounds, then images appeared, lurching before his eyes like a video shot by a drunkard. He was back home in the village, in Ebekh. A crowd had gathered, mostly Shamil’s relatives, on a road that was still damp from a recent rain. They were shouting and laughing, pointing at him.
Then Madina’s mother arrived in a formal fringed scarf; she was still a beautiful woman. She squeezed her way through the crowd, took Shamil by the hand, and led him off down the road. The crowd followed, tiptoeing, whistling greedily, and cracking jokes about Shamil’s boots. Shamil looked down and saw that he was wearing a pair of ridiculous white numbers with metallic clasps.
The Mountain and the Wall Page 13