Early in the afternoon, still angry, I arrived with a big box of sweetmeats for Zari’s children.
“There’s a message for you,” Zari said at the door. “Why can’t you get your own phone? I’m not your secretary!”
She could be so touchy and tiresome. I made for Mother’s room.
“Why’s her door shut?” I said. “She’s sleeping?”
“Morteza blew up again. He wants to know why you can’t take her.”
Mother had elected to live with Zari, for which Zari received something from me every month. I also gave something to Mother. Morteza wanted it all.
“He wants money,” said Zari, tears welling up in her eyes, her hand still covering her cheek. “He still thinks we’re hiding it from him.”
“What does that mean? Why’s your hand stuck to your face?”
“He thinks we were loaded, since Father worked for Nasrollah mirza all those years. He screams all the time, ‘You think I’m gullible and stupid? You think I don’t know you’re hiding things from me?’ He says we’re sneaky liars and misers. Or else, Father really was an incompetent, bankrupt idiot.”
“He said that about Father?”
“Mother came out of her room and I saw her turn white, and she went back in and shut the door.”
“He said that in front of her?”
“You think that’s all? He says our family went broke and pawned me off on him. He says he was tricked! He wouldn’t have married me and only did not to dishonor the family. And after Father died . . .”
She stared at me, grief and shame in her eyes.
“When he shouts, even the neighbors can hear him! He screamed so much today he scared the children and they started wailing. So he hit them. Mother locked herself in her room. The children went to get her, but she wouldn’t come out. They begged and cried and stamped their feet and pounded on her door until I started crying. Morteza said he’d hit me so my teeth would jump out. Then he slapped me around.”
Zari wept. I yanked her hand off her face and saw the bloodred welt on her cheek. The son of a bitch was slapping my sister. Now I would find him and kill him so that she’d cry only as his widow.
“Where is he?”
“How should I know? He’s gone to hell!”
“When did he leave?”
“Right after he beat me and my children and kicked the doors and broke plates and threw around our belongings! He’s an animal!”
“He must be taught a lesson once and for all,” I said.
“What’s the use?” Zari burst out sobbing. “He’s got some god-damn slut. He goes on and on about her — about some whore to my face. That’s what he wants the money for. For her! Imagine adoring a slut! What am I — his goddamn maid? You should see how he torments me. He says I’m dirt-poor, I’m a shrew, I’m getting old, I’m useless and cranky. He calls me a nobody!” Zari said, wailing. “He does what he wants since Father died.”
I didn’t want to hear another word. “Stop crying, I said!”
“But he’s the father of my children!” she said, sobbing.
That was his worst defect. I went out in the courtyard and lit a cigarette and smoked. Zari hid away inside the house. She had insisted on marrying Morteza, abandoning her studies, making three children with him. I came back in and knocked on Mother’s bed-room door. I heard her murmur something and barged in. She lay on the bedding, invested with dignity and helplessness. I was so angry I wanted to beat the walls.
“So, you’ve come?” Mother said to me.
“Haven’t you had lunch?” I said.
Zari leaned against the door, red-faced, with red eyes, arms folded.
“Shall I bring you lunch?” she asked Mother.
“Bring me poison.”
A copy of Tehran Mossavar lay by her hand. She motioned for me to sit.
“See what sort of brute he is? If only your father were alive . . .”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. She hid her face in her hand, momentarily overcome, then wiped the tears off efficiently.
“Did she give you the message?” Mother asked.
“What message?”
“Jalal called.”
“Jalal? That’s impossible.”
“It was him,” said Zari. “I talked to him.”
He’d called at one-thirty, asked after Mother, the children, and me as if he’d been away on vacation. He’d left a number for me to call immediately.
“What’s going on?” said Zari.
“How should I know?” I snapped back.
We got into a bitter argument overflowing with recriminations until Mother had to intercede. The children came in from the neighbor’s all quiet, then all happy to see us together, and I fetched the box of zoulbiah and bamieh that I’d bought at the confectioner’s, and we sat by Mother, eating golden treacly sweets with sticky fingers and glasses of tea, and made Mother retell stories about the days in the old house in Darvazeh Daulat until she took out the black-and-white and old sepia photographs from the small, battered suitcase behind the curtain, and we spread them on the bed — Father like a general with pensive eyes standing behind Mother, seated demurely and airbrushed; Grandfather in clerical robes and turban at the entrance of a mosque in Tabriz; Zari at five with a bow in her hair like a bumblebee; Zari radiant at sixteen before marrying the jackass; me with a crew cut, buttressed by Father and my bicycle; graduation from the Teacher’s College; a family picnic with the samovar under trees. Mother pointed here and there, looking astonishingly young all at once, then surprisingly tired, and trying, always trying, to tell us something else.
“Things were different then” is what she always said.
THE PHONE NUMBER WAS for a crowded café. The man who answered had an Armenian accent. His name was Khachik and he told me to call back. I did, three times in two hours, until he put me through.
“Jalal!” I said.
“Reza?” He gave directions, said to get there immediately, and hung up.
When I got there, the neon sign was blinking blue and green. They had tongue sandwiches and bologna with fat pickles and tripe on Thursdays. Inside they’d laid out the vodka at a corner table for a bunch of men. Khachik was the blond Armenian at the corner table telling jokes, his arm around a whore, his customers hollering with laughter. He shoved back his chair, took me through a door to the small kitchen in the back. He had dimples and blue eyes and two gold teeth.
“He’s not here,” he said to me.
“Don’t jerk me around! I just talked to him.”
“Call tomorrow night at nine,” he said, going back out to the front.
I exited through the back alley, imagining Morteza and how I was going to beat him until he’d cry and beg like a woman. My knuckles ached to sink into his face, finally breaking it open.
I STOOD SMOKING in a dark side street off Jaleh Square. I’d called Morteza from the café where I ended up having dinner. I was waiting for him. I saw the liver-red Peykan come down the street. He slammed on his brakes, screeched to a stop, jammed the car into a space with his lousy parking. He was still behind the wheel when I went over and tapped his half-open window. A brother-in-law with a nose like an eggplant and shiny black hair like a wig and lecherous lips, once handsome in his youth for half an hour.
“Get out,” I said.
He hesitated, leaned over to grab his jacket from the front seat, and got out of the car. He slung his jacket over one shoulder, barrel-chested and fleshy. He’d put on weight; he looked bloated.
“What’s the problem?”
“You’re the problem,” I said.
“Ha, ha,” he laughed, braying. He asked for a cigarette.
“Tell me something,” I said. “You pamper my sister? Care and protect her and her children as is your sacred duty?”
“Of course I do! But you know her, she bitches constantly.”
“You mean it’s her fault?” I said. “And Mother? You respect her as you should? How about Father’s memory?”
; “What d’you mean your father — of course — he’s, he was — what a man!”
I took out my keys and said to him, “See this?” Then I drew a line, scraping paint off the side of his car.
“You crazy?” he said, lunging for the key.
I threw a punch to his face so fast he looked stupefied. He put his hand to his mouth, and his fingers got bloody.
“I’m here to give you a lesson you won’t forget,” I said.
“What’ve I done to you?” he protested loudly.
I pushed him back against his car. “Me, them — what’s the difference?”
“What did she say?” he yelled. “What lies did she make up this time?”
I punched him again, to the left side of his face. He swung right back out, but missed me.
“Wait, let me explain — you don’t know —”
I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him over to the sidewalk. He kept taking wild swings and kicking, blood dripping from his mouth.
“Listen, motherfucker,” I said, “lay a hand on my sister and you’re dead. Tonight the emergency ward. Next time the morgue. I’ll dance on your grave.”
He reeled back, hurling insults at me, swearing his innocence by saints and prophets and members of his family. He was pathetic. I left him propped up in his car with a black eye and cut lip and enough gashes and bruises to keep him in pain for a week.
I walked to Jaleh Square to catch a taxi.
THE NEXT DAY, MOTHER CALLED my office very agitated about Morteza. He’d come home after ten the night before, received a call, and gone out, then come back an hour later all bloodied and bruised.
“They nearly broke all his bones! Maybe he owes money and he’s in trouble with some lowlifes.”
“He’s a lowlife himself, Mother.”
“He’s bruised and limping,” she said. “He’s your brother-in-law, for God’s sake! What if they’d killed him? What would become of Zari and the children?”
Morteza should have received the beating of his life sooner. From the first day, the first brick had been laid crooked. Men like Morteza never repent. It’s a complete waste of time. They just respond to punishment.
I left the office late in the evening. In the street I dialed the café from a public phone but could barely hear over the din of traffic. The man said something like, “Wait for the message,” then dropped the receiver with a thud, came back, and said, “Dinner is waiting for you.”
There and then I flagged a cab. I had to squeeze in the back with a man and woman. When I got off, the scent of her perfume still clung to my sleeve.
This time Khachik came out from behind the counter to greet me and we embraced like old friends, and he whispered. I went back through the kitchen. There was no one there. The door to the back alley was open, facing the back wall of a brick building, and I stepped into the dark. I saw a man’s shadow against the wall, the pinpoint glow of a cigarette. The shadow moved out.
“They said you were in Komiteh,” I said.
He nodded. I lit a cigarette, stood against the wall.
“For years our group received instructions from Europe,” Jalal said. “Two years ago, several of them came home. I was told to form a cell. The coffee shop was doing well. We had money. A while ago I had a hunch we had a traitor in our group. Shaheen was a new member. He was clever, but he was the traitor. I made sure. We had a serious problem, so I volunteered. I went over. It was the only way.”
“You let them recruit you?”
“I exposed a couple of student groups. You know, gave in some names. I made myself useful.”
“What about Shaheen?”
“SAVAK should’ve used someone more intelligent. You met him. He’s the one you talked to at Radio City.”
“You reckless bastard! You had me give a message to a fucking snitch?”
He put up both hands. “You did us a favor. My comrades were in the car with me. You helped expose an informer. A true revolutionary act!”
“Go to hell,” I said, incensed.
He stood against the wall, staring at me.
“Come on,” he said. “Nothing’s changed. We trust each other.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Omeed was my code name to Shaheen. I was in charge of our intelligence. At first he checked out. But I tailed him after he joined us. I knew everything about him — what he did, where he went. The license plate on every car he got into, the address of every house he used and the time and date of each visit, every place he ate, every office building he walked into.”
“He never suspected you?”
“He never saw my face. That’s how I work. Until I walked in at our last meeting. I had a file of incriminating evidence against him. I handed it to SAVAK. My best work! Proof he ran a cell and had plans to attack a gendarmerie and rob a Melli Bank. It was all in the file — the codes, his contacts, how he was double-crossing them. Recruiting, buying arms! He was a rat, a double agent. They’re so jittery. The slightest hint and they jump! They’re a knee-jerk establishment. They took him out.”
“He’s dead?”
“He’s in prison. He’s going to have to confess. My word against his. They kept us on the same floor. Twice he saw me when they took him down the hall. They had me there to unnerve him. I wasn’t afraid. I’m not afraid of them! They let me out and told me to lie low.”
But he looked worried. He asked for a cigarette.
“When he got your message, he figured we’d drawn him out to kill him, then and there. In the street. The son of a bitch! We didn’t touch him. We let him sweat. He got arrested and roughed up by his own people. He’s going to be paranoid forever! From now on he’ll be no good to anyone. Not even to himself.”
“I met your parents,” I said.
“My sister gave the address, huh? When did you see her? She’s always enjoyed humiliating me. Did she flirt with you?”
“She looked everywhere for you. Your parents are worried.”
“Didn’t they disgust you? Weren’t you relieved to get away from them like I was years ago? He’s another tyrant, my father. Bigoted and stupid. My mother is pathetic and haggard. In that dark, oily, suffocating house. He’s a brute, you know, with all his moral gibberish on dogma and piety and alms and the Absent One and doomsday. I hate him. I’m ashamed of her. She’s a servant in every conceivable way. I detest servitude!”
“The poor woman —”
“Reza, you and I are the only honest people I know! Look at us — stuck in some back alley in this phony and meaningless city. Sitting on top of a volcano. It’s been a bad week.”
He said there was trouble. His group was splitting up — there was a great deal of hostility on ideological differences. He was in the radical wing. He had set up a network to deliver information, give refuge, get medical help in time of combat. They were a bunch of theoreticians and dialecticians. Sometimes he wanted to strangle them. They were accusing him of playing anarchist.
“That’s what you say about me,” he said. “But they’re always bickering with mind-numbing ideological debates. They’re being stubborn and petty. Endangering the rest of us.”
“You should leave for a while,” I said.
TWENTY-TWO
I HAD INSISTED my brother check back with his special contact about corruption charges on Bandar Kangan. How did he know? “He knows,” my brother said ominously. He’s ominous these days.
“They’re after blood,” he said over breakfast.
Houshang had already left. Kavoos was buttering toast.
“I think they won’t be able to trace anything to Houshang. He’s clever.”
“You mean corrupt?” I said. “It’s the only way to get contracts like Kangan. Houshang’s al
ways been shrewd. They drink and play cards and shovel into each other’s pockets.” Kavoos shrugged and sipped tea, lit a cigarette, stared out to the garden.
“I feel . . .” He hesitated. “I don’t know, underneath all this reckless aban
don there’s something — something’s changed, but I can’t tell what it is.”
Then suddenly he said, “You know, I married the wrong woman.”
Their wedding had been the most elaborate and well-attended wedding of the decade. Politicians, ambassadors, the prime minister — she had insisted.
“You fell in love with her, remember?”
“No, I don’t.”
When he left, I went up to find the gaudy sapphire ring Houshang had given me to return it. I ended up rummaging through the upstairs rooms. Goli, a mediocre housekeeper, moody and sloppy, was no thief. Ramazan, although an uninspired cook, had kept exemplary house accounts for years and once found the diamond ring of a dinner guest in the powder room. I left a message for Houshang, headed downtown. He called back, cut me off to say he had the ring.
“But you gave it to me,” I said.
“You just want to return it!”
He said he’d taken it because he planned to return the ring immediately. Ultimately his gifts were his. He was so busy he never had time to do anything with the children, no matter when. Now he was going to sit in traffic to return a ring.
At midday I had an appointment for a haircut at Balenciaga and stopped off at the jeweler’s. The owner, Mr. Tala’afshan, made a big show of welcoming me — how I was honoring him with my presence, how he’d feared I’d withdrawn the kind and eminent patron-age of my family. He inquired after Mother. Such a lady, the most distinguished he’d ever seen! The crowning flower of society. She never visited anymore. I pretended to survey the glitter he kept under polished glass. He wanted me to try on a parure of diamonds and rubies.
In the Walled Gardens Page 20