The old days. Nasrollah mirza said they had been good.
“At my age, saying anything less would be admitting defeat. Futility,” he said. “I’m left to mull over the past. Whatever the mistakes, it’s too late now.”
He leaned forward, offering me a glass of tea.
“I don’t understand what’s going on anymore,” he said. “It’s become a — such a circus. We’re under the illusion we’ve leaped forward body and soul. It’s no good leaping by decree. If anything, our underpinnings should be secure, permanent. I’m not so sure if — well, we’ll see —”
He paused. We drank tea and he insisted I try the cake.
“We’ll see,” he repeated absently.
I started telling him about my friend Jalaleddin Hojjati. He listened, veined hands covered with liver spots and fingers inter-locked. A flicker constricted his eyes when he heard the words SAVAK, Komiteh. Disappointment. It was inevitable; no one liked stories about the secret police. I’d ruined his Friday, perhaps even stirring the languid profundity of his obscure disillusionments. Then ever so quickly he resumed an air of gracious concern.
As long as I’d known Nasrollah mirza he’d possessed tact and poise, he had emanated goodness, but that goodness was now muted and irrelevant.
He didn’t say a word until I had said more than was necessary. He understood about trouble, abuses of power, dead ends, but spared me the exposition.
“I saw his mother and sister in the street,” I said finally. “The mother looked haunted.”
“Yes,” Nasrollah mirza said vaguely. He reached for a gold Parker pen, asked for Jalal’s full name, and wrote carefully, promising to make calls and consult Kavoos. “My son’s the one with contacts in high places. I wonder about this country when I hear about his contacts. They’re such — such pretentious people.”
He accompanied me to the hall with his customary tact, murmuring it was time for him to slip away upstairs for his nap.
I wanted to make my exit then and there, since I had no business back in the living room. The Mosharraf brothers I’d once been friends with when we were children and had been thrown together ignorant of the world and friendship had been easy, but that seemed long ago. Their father had evidently retreated discreetly into a shell, into ever-constricting circles in order to safeguard and cultivate his integrity, typical of his class. Mahastee I’d seen all of three minutes. Perhaps another time, I told myself just as she came out into the hall. As she walked toward us, I felt a surge of indignation at how much I wanted to see her, this sudden weakness I felt. In my anger I decided to leave quickly, before she had the chance to talk to me, but still I waited as she covered the distance.
She was ten feet away when I remembered suddenly how one summer they had arrived for the holidays in Morshedabad and she had jumped out of the car and run over to me and thrown her arms around me and cried, “Reza! It’s summer! I’m so happy to see you!” I had felt my cheeks flush while she had danced around the trees. I was impatient for every vacation, always asking Father when they’d arrive and how long they’d stay. With each year my exasperation increased every time she left. She emitted radiance, changed the garden and meaning of life when she was there. She brought me books from Tehran and odd things like colored globes and flashlights and card decks and pens, and then once a Meccano set from abroad, which I later discovered she’d bribed one of her brothers to give to me. She was uncanny in her deceptions. “But I prefer your house to mine!” she’d say. All because she knew it was easier for her to visit mine and stay until all hours since Mother didn’t like it when I stayed over too long at theirs. The only gift I ever gave her was a blue-glazed octagonal tile with a chip in the corner. “It’s from the shrine in the village,” I said. “I found it in the rubble. It’s for good luck.” “I didn’t think you were superstitious,” she said. “I’m not, but you are,” I said.
That day she threw her arms around me, I had that sudden intake of breath, a strange quivering ripped through me. When I turned, I saw Father staring at me as if he’d become stone; then he turned and walked away. My heart sank, knowing that he understood more than I wanted him to, more than anyone else, and I had to resort to concealment. I disliked the change — the heaviness of his gaze, the obscure signs of his displeasure, the implication that she and I were not equal, for she thought I was her equal and behaved that way and that was enough, though I couldn’t see her father or mine doing the same. From that moment until they left, Father started giving me chores constantly to keep me away. She’d run through the trees calling to me — “Reza, I’m bored! What’s keeping you away?” — and I’d wait and watch until Father was off somewhere to go join them. The next summer when they arrived, he must have thought I was cured he was so indifferent. He went off to Azarbaijan to oversee their estates, and we spent entire weeks in the garden together, and running through the trees after dinner, I knew we were free and loved this freedom fiercely, all the more because I sensed it wasn’t ours and could be taken. I knew, long before she did. That last spring, in my fourteenth year, my sense of freedom suddenly evaporated as I went lurching between feeling angry and frustrated and solitary. I kept arguing with Father that I wanted to leave for Tehran and attend school in the capital. Gripped often by maddening flashes of rage at the limits of freedom and Mahastee’s appearances and disappearances, which were determined by her world and always beyond my control, I knew nothing could assuage my feelings. I turned to books more and more. Then I read in a novel how those who love fiercely so young see that love destroyed as adults. I knew it was a lie. I thought then nothing could destroy what I felt.
As I watched her now, a woman self-possessed, it seemed impossible that nearly nothing had once stood between us. Then two feet away I saw straight into her eyes. She was still utterly herself; I knew her well. The moment was hypnotic because I knew the fullness of desire — desire and regret — can never be understood nor fully exist until you leave. As I had long ago.
EIGHT
FATHER SPENT HALF an hour in the study with Reza, the door closed.
My sisters-in-law set up a table for bridge while exchanging gossip about dinner parties inaugurating the season. “When is yours?” they asked me.
Dr. Atabak was praising the latest medical breakthroughs in France when Mr. Malekshah, always the pedant, interrupted him to define the complete benefits of parsley and carrot juice. Then just as he was getting started on the marvels of Swedish calisthenics, they were asked to play bridge. My two pious aunts retired up stairs to take their afternoon nap. The marching suffragette went up to read Toynbee, but not before hearing the ladies hold forth on the fabulous new pearls of our favorite jeweler, who always fawned on them and was always willing to make exchanges with tact and discretion.
Before Reza’s sudden arrival, Father and his lifelong friend Mr. Mostaufi, abandoning the damask-covered chairs of the dining room for the corner armchairs under the imperious portrait of Grandfather garnished with medals, had been indulging in one of their favorite pastimes: proceeding through the vast and interconnected family trees of the aristocracy, branch to branch. This was always triggered by some news of an impending wedding or funeral or someone indisposed — as they called the sick — and they were off, going from parents to grandparents to aunts and uncles and progeny and intermarriages, fanning out into ever-rippling circles, all the while approving of each other’s memory and knowledge and dedication in this field by saying, “Yes, yes, and of course you know . . .” Now Mr. Mostaufi was dozing peacefully, alone in the corner. We all knew his wife would wake him up to lecture him any moment.
Houshang looked around and announced he wanted to go home immediately. He’d charmed everyone long enough and the show was over. I wanted to talk to Father about Peyman Bashirian, so I told him to go ahead. He hung back and said we’d all leave together, taking up backgammon with my brother Kavoos and the colonel. Houshang is so predictable, staying only to see what I was up to.
We had more tea
with dates and dried mulberries, choosing from a succession of sweets arranged in perfect pyramids on footed silver dishes around the drawing room. The dice rolled while the men played, cards shuffled at the bridge table. The afternoon sun was sinking behind the heavy drapes.
I waited. Suddenly I wasn’t waiting to talk to Father but to see Reza. With my husband watching from across the room, I thought of him, what he and I possessed together. A childhood, coming of age, families entwined for generations. What we had escaped was the fate — the compulsion — of being together.
I listened for footsteps in the hall, beyond the curtained French doors, eyeing my watch. Mother eyed me, talking about the potted plants and Seville orange trees in her hothouse to her good friends Mrs. Mostaufi and Mrs. Vahaab. Mrs. Mostaufi slipped away to awaken her dozing husband. Mrs. Vahaab took up much of the sofa, her ample body dipping into a green velvet dress and resurfacing at very puffy ankles. The penciled mole by her penciled lips shuddered as she spoke, her inflection epic, like her proportions. She’s known for her voice. Her husband, the retired colonel, lives at her feet. When she croons old favorites, he dabs his eyes with a starched handkerchief, overcome. Today she was talking about her bunions. The colonel said with military panache that it was time to leave. The Mostaufis returned arguing about the appropriateness of napping and, overhearing the colonel, agreed it was time to leave.
Mother accompanied them outside.
I flipped through magazines, mostly cut-and-paste rehashes of foreign periodicals. True confessions, crimes of passion, the art scene, cooking, pop singers like Aref and Googoosh, trendy movie stars, nostalgic tributes to dead artists like Mahvash. Mother sub-scribed to them all, embracing the grand and trivial with the contemplative enthusiasm of a philosopher. A door opened and closed, and I went out into the hall. Father and Reza were shaking hands by the grandfather clock between vistas of epic battles. I walked toward them and they smiled at me guardedly. They couldn’t have only been reminiscing. Reza made to leave and thanked Father, very official, and Father made him promise to visit more often.
Then he turned, and his eyes fixed on me for an instant with the measureless look of someone about to leave on an interminable voyage. And the moment came back with full force — how he’d left through that door when I’d been sixteen. With agonizing recognition I felt that old panic, taking fate with a blow, then turning away down the long tunnel of years.
I didn’t want him to leave again. I asked how it was that he worked in an office.
“Don’t you like teaching anymore?”
He smiled. “Of course I do.”
“My sons need a tutor,” I said.
He forgot to say anything. My first thought was I’d insulted him, now that he worked for a government department. Father interceded by saying I couldn’t find a more gifted and dedicated teacher than Reza. Unless he was too busy? Reza said, “No, no.” We made arrangements by the front door.
I wanted to walk him out, but when he opened the door we saw Mrs. Vahaab gesticulating to Mother by the driveway. She could never stop talking.
At the wheel of his great big American car, the colonel raised his voice, entreating. “Get in, madame, for God’s sake, get in.”
Reza left, and I remained in the entrance, an adult in possession of my life realizing we could never be in full possession of our emotions, their great force like a wind.
I looked up. The Russian chandelier was dirty. I told Father, who said dusting in a city with desert winds was an exercise in futility.
He made his way back into his study at my request, a little peeved, but mostly abstracted. I speculated on what Reza had told him. Housing trouble, an illness in the family, an unsecured debt? Father sat, withdrawn. I told him Peyman Bashirian’s story all in one go. Father took it, impassive, the pout in his face deepening.
“What do you think?” I said, sitting by the sepia picture of Grandfather with a handlebar mustache and stern eyes. He had studied at the polytechnic under Prussian and Austrian instructors before going abroad.
“What’s the world coming to?” said Father wearily. “Reza was here about his friend who’s a political prisoner. But these things don’t concern us.”
I felt dismayed at Father’s reticence, though I knew it was his exacting tact that made him so impassive. And also the insularity of a supremely refined man who had been cut off from the daily life of his own country.
“What’s the point of rebellion?” Father said. “It’s unseemly — it’s vulgar. Why don’t these young people use the proper channels?”
Pitting the words proper and unseemly and rebellion against one another in one sweep, Father had given expression to the disposition of an entire culture.
I asked again how we could help Mr. Bashirian get his son out of prison.
“Surely he has someone to turn to,” Father said.
“Of course he doesn’t.”
“You’re certain this isn’t some mistake?”
“Father, his son’s in there. What can we do?”
“My dear,” Father said discreetly, “tell him to be patient.”
“That’s easy for us to say.”
Father sighed. “Let’s see what I can do, if anything.”
I find what I said to him after that inexcusable. I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Father, what’s wrong? Can’t you see what’s going on around you? What have we got to lose? They’ve already turned their backs on you. You’re the one who always lectured us on principles and integrity. As if they’re the cure-all and be-all! Now you say, ‘Let’s see’? ‘Let’s see’ is the worst kind of excuse. But to say ‘if anything’! That’s giving up hope.”
AT NIGHT I STARED at the photograph of Grandmother that I kept on my desk.
She sat under poplars shimmering silvery in quiet splendor. Father’s mother. Austere with the widow’s peak and square face, the look in her eyes sweetened with old age, still wearing the pearl necklace. It gratified her to be feared. She said it scared off bores and hypocrites. She adored the pageantry of small moments. She adored rituals — early morning inspections of her rose garden, tea at five for the oddest assortment of people, whom she contradicted and provoked unfailingly, though they always came back, the iftar evening meal during the month of fasting, exacting interrogations of her household over accounts and alms for the needy and the doings of each and every member of her unwieldy retinue in Tehran and on her estates in Azarbaijan. Father had given me her necklace on my sixteenth birthday. I’d worn it for the first time the summer night Reza had come back and I’d taken him through the garden. Grandmother’s pearls, brought back in the winter of 1911 from Saint Petersburg, where Grandfather had been told of political agitations by radicals and anarchists, and one night, returning in a carriage from a formal dinner there in honor of two Romanov princes, he’d seen students thrashed, then arrested three blocks away, and his friends had reassured him, “Think nothing of it.” Instead his host, the grand duke, had taken him the next morning to buy the pearl necklace and an exquisite enamel frame by Fabergé, crowned with diamonds. Everyone said I looked like her, Grand-mother, and Reza’s father had said the same watching me grow up year after year. “May God never take her from us!” he said. “She knows our heart. Because she sees with the inner eye and her intuitions are spiritual.” After her death he had indulged me with stories about her and that vanished world, stories that consoled us both and that he told better than anyone else, even her own children.
I HAD BROUGHT office work to finish at home. I pulled out the report we’d just completed for publication, plopped down on the couch, read far into the night. Here was a whole country made up of statistics and graphs and charts. Apparitions on paper. But where was meaning?
I’d confronted Father as if he were the progenitor of all deeds and words, accountable for the doings of a nation. I should have brought him tea at his age and asked about the old days. We would have strolled out into the back garden between the trees. And he could poi
nt to where he’d pruned and planted, where he cultivated seedlings, and he would say: My father planted those and I planted . . . that mulberry, to bear fruit, like the quince and crab apple. The walnut to please your mother, the mighty oak to celebrate a firstborn son, the almonds for a white spring. The weeping willow by the stream of mountain water, and the pomegranate for its exquisite fruit. The Judas tree and lilac for their color and fragrance. He’d take my hand. He likes to walk that way. Never depending on his cane nor on what Dr. Atabak prescribes for him. He likes his garden more than people, more than governments, adornments, and even ambition finally.
He knows, he knows. He thinks it’s futile. And anything he says is dust in desert winds.
NINE
I GOT BACK AFTER NINE from teaching my classes at the Rahnema High School. I changed and wolfed down dinner while reviewing the new agenda for our underground group — the compelling points of our new bulletins, the importance of our Night Letter and its distribution to students and workers and teachers, the long list of translations for Dr. Hadi.
In the Walled Gardens Page 6