Fish- a History of One Migration

by Peter Aleshkovsky

  Even without my will, I knew clearly what he was about to do. He commanded me, and I obeyed, because if I hadn’t done what he wanted at that moment, he would have simply torn me apart the way a starved man tears up a flatbread. His weight was incredible; I lay buried under the weight of a mountain. I had no air to breathe, and he kept sucking it out of my lips, prickling my face with his bristly hair, reeking of hay.

  Then there was pain. The pain came in waves, bludgeoning me; it seemed it would never stop, but it did. Nasrulló abruptly let out a strange roar, as if he were choking, curved his back, shook his head, and fell beside me, convulsing as if he’d touched bare electrical wires.

  I turned away from him, curled up into a ball, and instantly fell into a bottomless pit. I fell and fell, without any sense of time, seeing neither light nor the walls of this endless hole, and when I finally hit the bottom and came back to my senses, the man and his horse were gone. I lay on the sheepskin covered up with a dirty rag. I had a skull-splitting headache, and my body felt wooden and stiff. I could not move my arms or legs; it hurt just to gather my fingers into a fist.

  I lay under the lean-to; the heat subsided; cicadas chirred in the tree behind me. I could feel their chirring on my skin, as if hundreds of tiny needles were stabbing me. But, curiously, this pain was also bringing my body back to life. I could already move my arms a bit; then I felt something sticky and hot on my legs and became scared.

  I remembered everything clearly, in the tiniest detail, and it all repeated itself, rising in front of my eyes again and again. I could not stop the visions; it was as if someone kept cruelly rewinding and replaying a film.

  Suddenly Ahror appeared at the edge of the pallet. He stepped toward me, bent down, kissed me on the forehead, gathered me in his arms, pressed me against his heart and kept repeating, “Quiet, quiet, girl, don’t scream like that, quiet.”

  I did not hear myself screaming, but boiling tears ran down my cheeks, burning deep grooves in my skin.

  Ahror had brought Galya back to the dig and, sensing trouble, went looking for me. He found me and took me to my mom at the hospital. I stayed there for two weeks. Kind Uncle Davron, the head surgeon, did everything that needed to be done—the animal had torn me like a flatbread.

  Mom and Aunt Gulsuhor took turns at my bedside, making me drink pomegranate juice, stroking my hair and talking to me, but I did not respond. My mouth and tongue refused to melt out of the “tea”-induced numbness. I could only grunt, and thus remained silent, staring at the ceiling. It pained me to look into other people’s eyes. The women cried furtively when they thought I was asleep and could not see their tears. But I did see them, peering out between the cracks of my nearly-closed eyelids.

  Still, my wooden body was softening. At the end of the second week, I got up from the bed by myself and went to the end of the hallway. By the time I came back, I could speak. I did not want to utter whole words, but for my mother’s sake, I said, “It’s alright, mom, let’s go home.”

  Ahror drove us from the hospital. He had visited me twice while I was there, bringing fruit and trying to talk to me, but I turned away and looked at the wall. I remember very well the way he said, “Forget it all. He must not live.” I felt ashamed of myself, and tears flowed involuntarily. Now I understand it was the tears that thawed me out. The tears and the kind words that surrounded me.

  Ahror stopped his truck directly before the door to our apartment building. I walked out calmly, keeping my head high, while the all-knowing matrons of Kosmodemyanskaya Street looked on from every window. Ahror did not come into our apartment, but just hugged me outside the door, and I buried my face in his hard chest. He turned and walked to his truck.

  I did not go back to the expedition.

  The following day they found Nasrulló the Uzbek in his tent in the vineyard. Like a dangerous snake pierced with a hunter’s spear, his body was nailed to his sheepskin bed with a sharp metal rod—the sort driven into the ground to hold up heavy vines. The police searched for the murderer, but never found him.

  The story made quite a stir. It seemed a Kosmodemyanskaya Street girl had been avenged not by the Criminal Code, but by a man. Everyone, including the police, knew his name, and everyone respected what he had done. The police did not have any evidence: when summoned to the station, Lidiya Grigoriyevna swore that Ahror Djurayev had spent the entire previous day with her and had stayed the night at her place as well.

  A week later, Lidiya Grigoriyevna flew to Leningrad on an urgent matter. She was never seen in Panjakent again. Ahror remained with the expedition. He never visited us at home after that. If we ran into each other in town, he walked on, looking through me as if we did not know each other.

  . 10 .

  At the hospital, they injected me with tranquilizers so I could sleep. During the day, the medicated fog kept me safely walled off from Nasrulló’s bristly blue beard, his hands on my body, the smells of his sweat and the herbal brew. When my mother’s or Aunt Gulsuhor’s hand stroked my hair, I felt a momentary relief, but then the shame flooded me anew. It was hard to keep it hidden.

  It was even harder at home. I remembered the neighbors’ faces with their mixed expressions of sympathy and disgust. I refused to go out. I holed up on my couch. I forced myself to eat; did not want to see anyone. The girls from school came to visit me, but the panic on my face when I heard they were at the door was such that Mom didn’t let them in.

  I continued to pretend to sleep. Mom tried talking to me, but all I did was turn away to face the wall or look indifferently out our window at our street. I did not notice being talked to. Mom left for work in the morning, came back at night, cleaned up my unfinished lunch and served me the dinners I was also unable to eat. I kept pushing food away. Mom would go into the kitchen or into her room with a heavy sigh. But it was still easier during the day.

  At night, the battle with sleep would begin. I’d get up and tiptoe around my room, look at the bright light of the streetlamp where it fell on the floor under my window until my eyes watered from its yellow glare, or would wrap a cold damp towel around my head (Mom thought I was having migraines). For a while, these things helped, but by morning, when the moon waned in the sky, I’d give up.

  It all started with the old man. He loomed above me and his eyes with their tiny pupils stabbed at my soul. Then he lay down on me, blocking the light with his body. I was submerged into a closed space filled with murky liquid. The liquid was charged with the pain of a myriad of stinging, blood-sucking leeches. I could not see them, yet they tormented me. The murky water pulsed with an unspeakable threat. I knew that this pain and fear would never leave me and that the only way to be rid of them would be to kill myself.

  I understood that would be a mortal sin, but couldn’t do anything about it. I chased the idea away, but didn’t have the strength to resist the pain. The old man was waiting above the surface of the murky water, and beneath it I was besieged by the leeches. There was only one way out—to go to the bathroom and open my veins. Then this torment would stop and all the bile that was boiling inside me would pour out with the blood.

  But as soon as the thought occurred to me, as if in punishment for my sinful idea, the space around me would close in, gag me, plugging my eyes and ears. I could no longer breathe, or scream, or see, or hear. I lived a death inside death. My miniscule “I” was squeezed so tightly by fear, that beyond it I could see nothing. My consciousness dimmed.

  Some dreadful force would begin to push me forward. I was dead and not breathing, yet I was being thrust through an endless tube. It was not enough to be blinded and senseless—the tube was ripping off my skin.

  Just as suddenly, the torment would end. Gasping for air, I would fall out of the tube onto my little couch. Every cell of my body ached, but at least I was alive. The fear broke free, and I must have been screaming, because this always ended with my mother’s hands stroking my head and shoulders. Yet every time I thought the hands were someone else’s, and I fought t
hem off—I saw the enormous Uzbek. But then my sense of reality won out and, sobbing and shaking feverishly, I pulled myself into a ball and quieted down. Mom sat by my side, patted my shoulder softly and sang a lullaby: “Sleep, my child, go to sleep, let the sweet sleep come to you.” She used to sing that song when I was little. I would wake up in the middle of the day, when she’d already gone to work.

  Other times at night I was pursued by the sharp fins of man-eating fish. They would surface suddenly—cold and razor-like—and would chase me as I tried to swim to the shore. They sliced the water dangerously close to my body. I could not see the fish themselves—only the blades of their fins. When they sped past me, a cold wave of fear would wash over my stomach, legs and sides. They would circle and catch up with me again. I would wake choking on my own scream.

  I don’t know what would have become of me if not for Doctor Davron. One morning he came by our apartment building in an ambulance, woke me up and took me to the hospital. I obeyed. I fell silent and tensed, setting up my defensive perimeter. He did not insist on talking to me.

  We drove around the district hospital on a narrow road and entered the fruit orchard that stretched behind the main structure. There, hidden from inquisitive eyes, stood a one-story building. Davron led me inside, past the receptionist—a round-faced Uzbek man in a white coat who looked more like a policeman. The Uzbek led us through a handle-less door that he opened with a key. We were in the psychiatric ward. I realized I was done for.

  Davron confidently led me down the hall. Strange patients huddled against the walls—bleary-eyed, with trembling hands, young and old, silent and giggling and yelling something at us. One of them, an older man with disheveled hair wearing a faded military blouse, blocked our path, saluted us military-style, and commanded, “Battalion, eyes right!”

  Davron walked on, ignoring him. I followed on the doctor’s heels.

  At the end of the hallway, the corner room housed abandoned retarded children. When we entered, they were sitting around a large table and drawing with colored pencils. Their teacher sat close-by, clearly suffering from lack of sleep, and mostly indifferent.

  Twelve faces distorted with Down syndrome turned to us as if on command. Twelve puffy, cross-eyed, disproportionately large heads mumbled, “Good morning!” just as they’d been taught.

  I froze. Davron let go of my hand. Automatically, I said good morning, too. And then the fattest, biggest, most awkward boy—he was about ten, with unnaturally bloated, poorly formed fingers—ran up to me, grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the table.

  “Look, look, look!” he repeated.

  His hand was surprisingly warm and his skin incredibly soft. He was pink as a piglet and smelled of milk, like a newborn baby. Sensing my hesitation, he stopped abruptly, halfway to the table, and gave me a rushed hug. He laughed irresistibly and kept saying, “Good boy, Dimulka is a good boy.” For some reason, his touch made me feel easy and joyful. I stroked his head, covered with soft fuzz, and said, “Yes, good boy, calm down, what did you want to show me?”

  “Look-look-look,” he babbled again and dragged me on with unexpected strength.

  I came up to the table. The children regarded us with interest and only one of them, completely dissociated from reality, picked his nose unselfconsciously. The boy wanted to show me his drawing.

  “Look, look, the sun! Yes!” he assertively nailed the picture with his finger.

  On his sheet of paper, yellow lines scattered around chaotically; the usual round shape was nowhere to be found.

  “The sun, yes, yes!” he nodded solemnly and then suddenly made a movement with his ugly stubby fingers in front of his face, as if cutting through the air with scissors. Then he threw his hands up in the air and laughed happily. The next instant I was laughing with him. I caught myself remembering the doctor behind me, but Davron was laughing as well.

  “I’ll leave you here for an hour, ok? I have to visit my patients. Could you draw with them? Look how happy they are to have you.”

  I didn’t understand why he was doing this, but nodded in agreement. Aunt Firuza, the teacher, locked the door behind Davron, and went back to her chair. Soon we were drawing and learning words.

  “A bird,” the children said after me.

  Dimulka added importantly:

  “Sparrow, chirp-chirp. Yes! Yes!” and slapped his face with his hands in delight.

  I got used to them very quickly: the boys were kind. Their faces were no longer frightening to me, and I even wiped their spit a couple times with a towel—two of the boys drooled constantly.

  When Davron came to get me, I was reading “The Giant Roach”[18] to them. I don’t know how many of them understood how much, but all were listening intently, their faces glowing. The children did not want to let me go. I took my time saying goodbye, patting each boy on the head and holding his hand, and they stroked and touched me back. They needed touch and kindness like air. I promised to come again.

  Davron helped me into the ambulance van.

  I was silent. The excited, kind, idiotic faces remained in my mind’s eye.

  “What do you think about my kids?” Davron asked.

  “They’re nice. It’s easy with them.”

  “They liked you. If you want, you’re welcome to come and help out; no one cares about them here.”

  Davron kissed me on the forehead and told Hakim, the driver, to take me home.

  Dimulka saved me that night. I imagined us drawing horses, the moon, a flower, a donkey, a snake, a light bulb. I could hear his laughter and his assertive “Yes! Yes!” I could feel his warm, soft hands on my face and could smell his milky odor. His silly smile was the last thing I saw before falling asleep.

  I slept without trouble. In the morning, I got up at the same time as my mom and solemnly declared: “I am not going back to school. I want you to get me a job teaching the retarded kids.”

  So it was that, having finished only eight grades of school, I started working at our hospital. I lived with my boys for an entire year and could not have dreamed of a better life. The hospital hired me as a nurse’s assistant and even paid me a monthly salary of one hundred and five rubles. The hospital also provided meals for its staff, and my mom and I now had enough money. Sometimes I stayed for the night, giving the night nurses a break. This was done, of course, behind the head nurse’s back, but she looked the other way.

  One morning, just as I entered the hospital’s campus I saw a familiar truck. Ahror had brought in his wife. She was very ill.

  I put on a white coat and cap and asked my supervisor to excuse me for an hour. I went to the main building; I had to see the woman.

  . 11 .

  The truck was gone from the hospital’s parking lot. I went upstairs to the third floor into the second therapy unit. Mukhibá Djurayeva had just been brought back from having her X-rays done.

  “The cancer has metastasized all over her body,” a nurse I knew told me. “If you want to talk to her, hurry up, because they’ll give her morphine soon and she’ll be out. She’ll be in pain until the end. A sad and sorry case. She’s in room four, by the window.”

  I went to the room. Aunt Mukhibá was in the corner, next to a big window. On her bedside table were a plate of fruit and a bottle of Narzan mineral water. An aluminum cup. The blanket was pulled up to her chest. There appeared to be no body under the cover—the illness had eaten it all up. Only her eyes were alive. Her black irises gleamed with an unhealthy sheen. When I approached, the irises turned to me.

  “Thank you, I don’t need anything,” she whispered.

  “Aunt Mukhibá, my name is Vera, I’m the daughter of the geologist Nikolai; I’ve come to sit with you.”

  “You are Vera, the Russian girl that gave me back my husband?” her lips formed an imitation of a smile. “Go ahead, sit down. It’s hard for me to talk, so you tell me about the other woman.”

  I sat on a chair and took her paper-dry hand into mine. I began to talk, stroking and massagin
g her fingers all the while. Mukhibá listened silently. Her hands were cold, like the hands of Grandma Lisichanskaya when she is dying. I kept talking and massaging, until what little blood she had left flowed to warm her fingers.

  Her doctor came in with the nurse, but when Mukhibá saw the syringe, she shook her head:

  “I don’t want to, I must stay awake.”

  The doctor did not try to convince her, just shrugged his shoulders and left. No one disturbed us after that. The other patients did not pay us any attention. I spoke softly for as long as I could, and then I fell silent. Mukhibá had closed her eyes a long time ago, but I knew she was not sleeping. Once I had warmed up her hands, I began to stroke her head, her dry, bristly gray hair. She breathed through her mouth, in short and shallow breaths. I kept running my fingers through her hair, parting it into strands, and trying to picture her braiding it into forty braids as a girl. I rubbed her temple with the pads of my fingers or cupped my hand like a shell next to her ear—my mom played with me like that when I was little. Instinctively, I put my hand on her forehead and mostly forgot about it. My left hand went back to warming her fingers, which were quickly growing cold again.