In the shade of an old walnut tree stood akó Ahror and Lidiya Grigoriyevna. Ahror offered her a yellow flower. Lidiya took the flower and brushed it around his face, barely touching, as if setting down a vague outline of a portrait. Ahror, his eyes closed, stood there for a long time, blind and happy. Then he held her head tenderly in his hands and kissed her forehead, not opening his eyes. Very lightly, he touched her hair with his lips, inhaled its aroma, and pulled her closer.
They fell into the grass together. When they laughed, it sounded forced to me, but the laughing was quickly replaced with garbled sounds of speech from which I could only sometimes pick out the words “Ahror” and “Lida.” Their quick, heavy breathing muddled the rest of the words as if they were speaking a special language whose speed made blood thump in my temples and filled my cheeks, face and neck with the color of a fired-up bread-oven. A butterfly darting around a night light could not hope to match the haphazard trajectories of their hands. It looked like a strange game in which it was important not to let the other player into your space. Sparks flew whenever their hands touched; I was afraid they would set the grass on fire.
Ahror won. He was already undoing the small buttons of Lidiya Grigoriyevna’s dress, and she was yanking off the thick, home-made shirt over his head. Electricity spread from their hands across the orchard. Every leaf on every tree froze in an unnatural tension. Sparks rolled off their bodies with unmistakable crackling; if they fell on their skin, they nipped and bit the flesh in throbbing ecstasy. Insects fell silent as if before an earthquake. The sun forced its heat through the tree-canopy with the same abandon, but it could not be felt in the shade of the orchard. Lidiya Grigoriyevna’s sandals and Ahror’s loafers flew aside like shards of an exploded light bulb; his powerful tanned back glistened above the green grass, and from the darkness under his arm her white breast gleamed, with its almond-hard nipple. Ahror kissed her neck, then found her nipple and sucked from it, like an infant, the milk of love that a woman gives at such moments (as Aunt Gulsuhor later explained men’s yearning for our breasts).
The hair crackled on my head. I could not look away from their duel. My body felt like a chunk of iron glued to the magnetic earth. Right before the climax I came back to my senses, and realized I had to flee. I must have started from the ground too clumsily and suddenly, and a branch snapped loudly beneath me. Lidiya Grigoriyevna turned her head. Our eyes met; hers shone with triumph. Akó Ahror did not hear anything; his fingertips were dancing on his belt. I crawled backwards awkwardly, almost not hiding any more, then jumped up and ran to the expedition camp, to the haús filled with watermelons that were cooling it for dinner. I fell into the water dressed as I was, and the living water instantly returned me to the real world.
Later I sat drying in the sun—the normal sun that burned straight to the bone—turning this way and that. Finally, with my mottled, wet hair, I snuck into the lab, went to my table and busied myself with my sponge and the fresco fragments.
They came in. I was shaken: happy for them, and envious of Lidiya Grigoriyevna. Ahror went for the teakettle, filled it with water, put it on. Lidiya Grigoriyevna sat at her table. I could not work; everything fell through my fingers, the fragments were blurry in my eyes. Lidiya Grigoriyevna noticed this and sent me home early, saying that I must have spent too much time in the sun.
The next day I asked to return to the dig. Lidiya Grigoriyevna agreed readily, and I began going to the old fortress again. Often, instead of akó Boria’s lectures, Lidiya Grigoriyevna played improvised concerts for us. We listened, and it was great, but not the same as when she played for her Ahror and for me, who had accidentally strayed into the orbit of their love.
. 4 .
It is strange that so many years have passed and I still do not want to say the girl’s name, which must mean I have still not forgiven her. To be honest, the mere thought of her makes me feel queasy; I just glanced in the mirror, and my cheeks are aflame, but that could also be because it is stuffy in here. I got up, cracked the window open, tucked the blanket in around my sleeping grandma, and came back to the table.
The girl was from Leningrad, a first-year student, a daughter of some high-ranking parent. She had a very high opinion of herself, but she was smart, and at first I sought her attention. Could it be that to this day I am ashamed I was so wrong about her?
I remember the scene as if it were yesterday. We were sitting on the aivan with our morning tea. There were only a few of us left, five or six people. Normally only archaeologists went from the base-camp to the dig; this privilege was extended to me after my work in the conservation lab and because I lived four fences over from the camp. We were finishing our flatbreads with jam, washing them down with hot black tea. Ahror, as always in the morning, stood by his truck waiting for us to load up. He was wearing the same shirt he always wore, albeit washed and ironed daily, a pair of light, loose trousers, warm felt loafers, and no socks. He had a rag in his hand: he had just finished his periodic ritual of dusting off the truck’s windows, mirrors and lights, and then wiping down the hood. Now he fumbled with his rag, not knowing how to occupy himself, gazing toward the orchard and the old walnut tree. His cheekbones and his sharp, thin nose looked as if they were carved out of stone.
“I hate him,” said that girl, her eyes narrowed. “He puts up this whole Muslim thing, and he fucks Lidka.”
I don’t know if akó Ahror heard her—he was a good hundred feet from the aivan , and nothing changed in his face—but I, idiot, could not take it, splashed my hot tea at her, stomped my foot and said loudly, “How dare you say that, you hen!”
The tea did not really burn her, but it did give her a good fright: she started, screamed, flailed at the drops on her dress as if trying to get rid of a nasty bug. I was about to grab a fistful of her hair, but two guys caught me and held me back; they were the draftsmen from Repin College, Vova and Andrei. Somehow, they pulled us apart and made us calm down. Thank God it didn’t occur to anyone to try to get us to make up.
The girl stayed at the base (it was her turn for kitchen duty), and I went to the dig. It was very early, around four-thirty, the dusk was just slipping towards the mountains, and the sun had not yet risen: we started work early, stopped to wait out the heat of the day, and finished from four to six, when the heat let up.
Ahror and akó Boria rode in the cab, and the rest of us huddled in the bed in our padded overcoats: the wind still held the night’s bone-chilling air. The climate in Asia is extreme, and even in summer one can perish overnight if caught without a fire and a blanket.
The truck, slowly grinding through its gears, climbed the fortress hill. Leaving behind the vineyards, it rolled in a cloud of dust along the road at the bottom of the gorge between the shahristan—the ancient settlement—and the kuhendiz—the citadel that had been the king’s palace. Akó Boria had told us that in the old days the fortress was considered unassailable, since the only way to access it was by a bridge over the gorge. The settlement itself had been circled with walls topped with tall, round towers. These were spaced evenly around the town, and each had a street running toward it. The residents of that street were responsible for manning and maintaining the tower, and in exchange received a tax from everyone who entered the town through its gates.
Seen from a distance, the settlement—now a large hill of pahsa and sand covered in sun-burnt grass, burrs, and scraggly wild rose bushes—resembled a Muslim’s skull. The dominant color was the gray-white of a shaven head, since the sun burned everything to dust, until the gray grass mixed with the dry packed pahsa and the dusty sand. In the bright light, the bumps and cracks, flushed by the spring rains, would disappear. The hill looked naked, adorned only with goat paths twisting across its slopes, like veins on the temples of a giant head.
In the mornings, in the receding twilight, the light and shadows sometimes fell just right, creating a miraculous vision: the crumbled shapes of walls and towers appeared suddenly from around the hill. This would only last a
moment, as the ancient city, as if caught on photo paper, revealed its lines. The lines were vague, yet still visible from the slowly moving truck; the city emerged, showed itself, and instantly began to melt back into the mud slides that had buried it. Somewhere in the depths of the earth, the sun was being born; its light was not yet visible, but its unseen messengers had been sent ahead to change the angle of light in the air, to hide the secret. We were still driving along the foot of the hill, but the towers and walls were no longer visible. Akó Boria once explained this phenomenon to us. I did not remember the difficult words; it was something about the laws of optics. It all remained a mystery for me, like the wonder of a fading rainbow: now it’s here, half-a-world tall, with all its colors, and now it is fading and is already gone, and only the joy of communion remains.
When the walls emerged from the hillside, we shouted, “Open, Sesame!” from the truck bed. We were convinced that one day the hill would open wide and we would see the blooming, clean-swept streets, lined with rich houses, running toward the market square. And the square would be thick with stores, filled with Chinese silks and Syrian seeing-eye beads, pure Arab silver, Indian spices and incense, and the local blue-black steel. In the center, there would be vats of rich plov . There would be rows of barrels filled with millet and sorghum, and flocks of insatiable sparrows would flit about stealing the grain. Old men, hired specifically for the task, would lazily shoo them with twisted sticks. The main haús , the water source in case of a siege, set apart from the residential streets and the two main temples, would be hidden in the green shade of trees. Their branches would bend towards the water like the courtesans who dance at the feast in the king’s palace. Captives from faraway lands, they bow to the floor, touching it with their hands as they begin their dance, to show respect for their master and his rich, distinguished guests.
Akó Boria told us about that world, long gone. I could see it then just as I can see it now as I keep my bedside watch over the dying grandma Lisichanskaya, half-dreaming, half-awake in my armchair. When I am not reading, I remember things and indulge my visions. I am forty-two, and it will be a long time before I can rest in retirement. If ever.
The truck climbed the last steep slope and we arrived at the dig. Tents were pitched in a row: one for the preservation crew, another for the architectural draftsmen, and the large communal one for breaks, where it was always stuffy and smelled of sweat. Actually, we rarely took breaks there, since everyone preferred to rest in the shade of the tall earthen wall surrounding the dig, sitting on a padded coat tossed on the ground. The shade is treacherous: when you are overheated, you can catch an inflammation of the kidneys or testicular ducts[10] just from sitting on the cool ground.
The guys jumped off the truck before it stopped—show-offs, it was a game for them. Ahror drove around the settlement slowly anyway, as if he did not want to make even a tiny impression in the road, already worn smooth by years of expeditions.
I remember that I got off next to the architects’ tent, and went in to get the folding two-meter ruler, since I was going to hold it upright while Andrei, looking through a level, measured certain points on the strata and shouted the numbers to Vova, who wrote them on the map. For a moment, I was alone in the tent. The flap swung back, and akó Ahror entered. He came up to me and held me by the shoulders; his hands were strong, and I tensed up unconsciously, as if clenched in a trap; my heart sank. He turned me towards him, looked straight into my eyes, and said, “I love her, Vera, love her more than life. Thank you.”
My face felt as if it had been burned with boiling tea, but I did not look away. I simply answered, “I know.”
And burst into such hopeless tears that I had to break away from him and run out, run not knowing where.
I rushed out, almost knocked over akó Boria, ran up the mound of dug-up dirt, kicked up a cloud of dust and tumbled down, down the slope like a rubber ball, not thinking that I could get hurt, that burrs would shred my legs and dress, hitting my elbows and sides against the hard stale crust of the ancient shaved skull.
Somehow I brought myself to a stop. I hid my face in my hands and wept out loud. I knew that I was alone, that no one could see or hear me, and I howled like a dog, I screeched and clawed at the ground. Then I pressed against the still cool dirt, hoping that it would draw the heat from my chest and stomach. It did. Gradually, I came back to my senses—dirty, disheveled, in a torn dress, and with an intolerable need to pee. I peed, walked away a bit, crouched down on a little bump, picked up a dry grass stalk and sucked on it hungrily. I remember my head was spinning; my eyes, already dry, looked across the gorge to the fortress. There, at the very top of the hill, a jenny[11] was grazing, tethered on a chain held down by a meter-long stake. She paused and turned her head towards me. She was chewing on a tuft of dry grass which slowly disappeared in her mouth.
. 5 .
We regarded each other, each chewing her dry stalk of grass. The shadows on the kuhendiz began to fill with crimson: the sun was rising behind the fortress hill. Crimson fingers stretched towards the shahristan and spilled into the gorge between myself and the donkey. An old road followed the gorge from the mountain villages to Panjakent, where it ended at the market square. It was very quiet, the wind subsided, the rocks and the pahsa of the ruins prepared themselves for the sunrise, and even the grasshoppers disappeared as if they had never been. High above us, a pair of doves flew towards the city following the twists of the gorge; they were heading to feed on the corn dumped in the marketplace.
The sun rises quickly here. Crimson is replaced with pink, which, in turn, is chased off by orange, pushed into the shadows and hollows, so that the new color can take the highest points of the surface and roll down like hot chocolate over a scoop of ice-cream. The change comes rapidly, one wave after another.
I loved sunrises. I always stood up tall, straightening my back and planting my feet wide on the ground; then I lowered my hands, palms-down, touched the crimson forehead of the hill and slowly, like a sorceress, raised them again. It was important not to rush, to match the sun’s pace, so that my hands could cling to its disc and have it push them up, even though it looked as if I was lifting it.
My arms would feel leaden; my fingers would tremble, for the burden they were lifting from the deep well in the citadel is not for the weak. Slowly, so slowly, the hands would rise, and the growing arc of the sun, as if drawn by a magnet, would crawl after them. Once out of the dungeon’s cold and into the pure air, the sun began to heat; now it was orange and my hands held it on its sides, like a basketball.
My arms are tired, but they must not tremble. The trembling is inside me, because this ascent I am making is a miracle, and I am proud of my perseverance: my legs are rooted, angled like the base of a tower; my hands are parting now, letting go of the orb. And now it rolls out fully and yellows swiftly; the sun is a lemon on a shuddering branch. All that is left to do is to slap it from below, like a light spank to a baby’s behind, and it will continue its march on its own and grow smaller.
My skin could already feel its heat, not yet cruel but warming, like the warmth of an open fire. In an hour, the sun will have the heat of a tandyr bread oven, that intolerable heat which bakes your bones if you stand still. In another hour it will be hell, the air will shudder, the haze will curtain off the mountains, and only a tiny pancake will remain, bubbling angrily in the distant and bottomless sky. When looked at straight, through squinted eyes, it immediately turns into a white-hot cross.
I did it then: pulled up the sun, set it free in the sky. My arms and fingers were numb and I squeezed and opened my fists a couple times. It was time to go back to the dig: our team started work at daybreak. And then I heard the scream, and then again. It was coming from the gorge. I looked down.
It was a common jack-donkey, one of the dozens who wait for their masters in a corral at the city’s market. He was being ridden by an old dehkanin-farmer; a pair of stuffed saddlebags hung on his sides, held together with strong c
loth. The old man tapped the jack’s neck with his right big toe, just under his ear, which stood up like a smokestack. The jack walked slowly, as if he was carrying a ton. Suddenly, he curled his lips, baring his bluish gums with their strong teeth, shook his head, and let out another coughing wail. The echo bounced around the gorge and flew up, to the top of the hill, where the jenny heard it. She was the one for whom it was intended, this cry of desperation. The jenny rolled a terrified eye to look below; she was protected by a steep slope. The fortress on whose remains she was grazing was inaccessible from the gorge, even for a lusty donkey used to scaling cliffs. Still, his thunderous voice scared her; she jerked her head, and took off galloping away from the edge, forgetting her chain. The chain almost snapped her off her feet, jerking her backward, but the animal had lost its mind from fear. With characteristic stubbornness, she lunged and lunged again, as if attacking an invisible foe and trying to knock him down with her forehead, as stupid rams do to gates. Foam flew off her in great flakes, and it seemed like I could smell her fear on the wind. The jack let out another gut-wrenching shriek and went on hollering, no longer stopping for breath. Jenny echoed him from her terror-filled throat, screaming as if all the merciless furies of the night were tearing her apart with their claws.
The jack, meanwhile, rooted himself firmly to the ground, spreading his legs in a strange impression of a pommel horse. He threw his head back and transitioned to a roar that mixed pain with wild, animal passion. His eyes grew dull and filled with blood. The old man silently dismounted, took the saddle-bags off the donkey, spread them out in the shade of the wall and sat down cross-legged. He pulled out a small gourd from inside his sash, threw a pinch of nasvai under his tongue and went all glassy, as if having lost his hearing. He had floated into a different dimension of time and space; his face looked tranquil; his cheek muscles relaxed, his eyelids drooped heavily and almost closed, leaving just two tiny cracks as his window onto this insane world.
Fish- a History of One Migration Page 3