The Devils' Dance

by Hamid Ismailov

Abdulla realised he was a Tatar and responded in Tatar, ‘What else do we do!’ and clapped him on the shoulder.

  When the Tatar heard his own language spoken, as if exhilarated, he quivered.

  ‘Do you speak Tatar, then?’ he asked, unable to conceal his joy.

  ‘Not very well,’ Abdulla admitted. ‘I have read Ghabdulla Tuqay and Qayum Nosiri.’

  Although those names sounded Tatar, they clearly meant nothing to the youth, but they moved him deeply and, once he heard his own language, he began opening his heart to Abdulla.

  For some reason Abdulla presumed that this lad, too, would know a lot about the nineteenth-century, but no, the youth was neither a historian, nor a spy, nor a trader, nor a mulla: he turned out to be just an ordinary criminal. When he was released from prison in Samara, his mother had died, and his father was starving because of the failed harvest. ‘Right, let’s go to Tashkent,’ said the father, and took his son to Tashkent. There, his father married an Uzbek widow and worked on a building site as a painter, a night-watchman and, when the occasion presented itself, as a bricklayer. He kept his son Rafail on as an assistant, to make sure he didn’t go off the rails. Rafail’s new stepmother Xosiyat worked as an office cleaner, when she wasn’t making bread to sell at the market, and that was how the family survived.

  It so happened that the stepmother got a job as a night cleaner in the local NKVD quarters, but somehow a few papers went missing. Inevitably, an interrogator used this as a pretext to make a pass at Xosiyat. When Xosiyat got home, she told her husband everything that had happened. The husband picked up a builder’s mallet and went to see the NKVD man who employed his wife as a cleaner. In his efforts to restore justice, he entered the building, but never emerged again.

  That day Rafail had gone to the Khiva open-air cinema and, when he came home he saw his stepmother sitting there abandoned and alone, tears falling from her eyes. She had been raped, but didn’t dare go to the NKVD; and her husband, who had gone, had still not come home.

  Then Rafail put the biggest screwdriver he could find under his shirt and went to the district NKVD, where his father had gone. At first they wouldn’t let him in. But he was devious: ‘I’ve come to expose some bad things my father has done,’ he said, and he was taken to the office of the very interrogator who’d caused the trouble. When he looked, he saw his father, covered in blood, lying down, barely alive, in a corner.

  He grabbed the screwdriver and thrust it into the interrogator’s throat and then his chest. ‘That’s for my father! That’s for my mother!’ he said, as he ripped the scoundrel to shreds.

  ‘Now I’m in prison,’ this heroic young man said, baring his marmot teeth.

  Abdulla was too stunned for words.

  —

  After the evening meal was over, the people once again ‘assembled on the square’. Now everyone seemed to be burning to tell stories, to take this ritual to their hearts; some preferring to listen, others to disclose their innermost secrets. Whatever the case, the cell elder was not going to interfere with anyone: it freed the prison bosses from the danger of any trouble. No specially devised ritual would have done so well to keep the prisoners occupied.

  ‘People, let’s hear more about the English! Where are you, Muborak, ethnic minority?’

  Muborak stood in front of the circle of men, put his hands on his hips in the Bukharan fashion, took a deep breath and plunged right in.

  ‘Well, lucky brethren,’ he began, as if imitating Abdulla. ‘As you’ll remember, we left Colonel Stoddart in the castle dungeon. That dungeon was worse than our prison, pitch dark, no lamp. Stoddart lay there without moving for two hours, and then a side door opened and a man holding a flare came in. Stoddart wondered if it was the Emir. He bowed low and said, “God forgive me, I’m innocent. I’m only an envoy. If my visit displeases his highness the Emir, let him give the order and I’ll go!” The man, who was in fact the Chief of Police, promised to pass on Stoddart’s words.’

  As Abdulla listened to Muborak’s story, he detected a change in his accent. Could he be acting a part? Who was he, really? But a moment later he couldn’t help being sucked back in to the convoluted story.

  ‘As soon as the Police Chief left, Stoddart was taken from the dungeon and thrown into a bug-infested pit with thieves and murderers. The Colonel got the other prisoners on his side by giving them some of his tobacco; smoking was the only way to drive the insects off their faces.

  ‘The next day the executioner came down into the pit and delivered an ultimatum: either convert to Islam, or be killed. Fearing for his life, Stoddart gave in and pronounced the shahada. He endured two more months in that pit, before he was pulled out, tied up with a lasso and brought before the Chief of Police. “Your property has been forfeited and your weapon confiscated,” the Chief told him. “The vizier has told his highness the Emir that your letter is from the Tsar of Russia: that it’s false, a forgery, and you’re an English spy.”

  ‘“I’m an envoy!” Stoddart insisted.

  ‘The Police Chief interrogated him thoroughly and searched him. By now Stoddart was living comfortably in the Police Chief’s house.’

  The storytelling broke off here, almost as if the guards had been waiting in the wings; the cell door banged open, and a warder yelled: ‘Prisoner Ma’sumov, for interrogation!’

  Everyone fell silent. Little Sodiq, who had greeted Abdulla on his first day, put his jacket over his shoulders and felt his way to the door.

  ‘The holiday’s over!’ a prisoner said. Someone else muttered under their breath, ‘It’s started.’ The company that had only just formed was scattered, like ice crunched under a boot.

  —

  Five minutes or so later, someone else was taken off for interrogation, then another. After a while Sodiq returned, his arms and legs trembling; eventually, a moustachioed Russian was taken to replace him. ‘So the game of cricket has started,’ Abdulla thought darkly, ‘one man in, another man out.’ Was he going to be summoned? It was something he had to be ready for. They would try to stitch him up, but with what evidence?

  Though the wretched Stoddart had been imprisoned in a strange land, while Abdulla had the dubious privilege of being locked up in his own country, what other difference lay between them? Like Stoddart, he had been thrown into a dungeon without any questioning, without any attempt to determine whether he was guilty or innocent; he supposed he ought to be thankful that the march of progress had replaced bug-infested pits with stinking concrete cells. The more things change, the more they stay the same: an expression never more true than when applied to human nature.

  When Madali ascended the throne, he was at most fifteen years old; if Hakim’s eloquent account is to be believed, perhaps even younger. But he wasted no time in weeding the field, eliminating one after the other of the viziers and beys whom his father had appointed. These men, all old enough to be Madali’s father, were despatched to the next world as easily as though they were snot-nosed children. He had the burly Keeper of the Seals seized, his house looted and the man himself deported to Russia. Madali even beheaded his brother Abdulloh with his own hand. Those who managed to escape the cull would have their steps dogged by informers, for the teenaged Emir feared intrigue from every corner, and trusted nobody but his mother Nodira.

  This was the time when Oyxon was waiting impatiently for Gulxaniy to return with the news from Eski-Novqat. Long before then she had finished this poem:

  Night and day, seeing shadows or someone watching behind –

  Haunting my loneliness, all of the day and all of the night.

  My terrors and anxieties are faint and shallow as breath.

  Yet at each step my grave’s abyss looms ever nearer in sight.

  Like sharp splinters, or shards of rock in the mountains,

  Emptiness pierces my shoulders with a fear of light.

  At every lamp, my sombre soul hides in
my shadow.

  As the lamp passes over, my soul hides in my body in fright.

  A mouth but no head is speaking the words, ‘Turn around’

  But if I look behind, then there’s only myself in sight.

  How strange that my fear of vanishing is frightening itself –

  A piece of bread is heaven, yes, but the oven’s hell’s spite.

  Oh you who pass, transparent in body, without a shadow.

  See me: my blood burns like the rising sun’s light!

  When Gulxaniy had finished his business in Eski-Novqat and was on his way back to Kokand, he was met by two of Madali’s soldiers who claimed to have been ordered to accompany him. Although his heart missed a beat, he didn’t let it show, and rode with them for two days’ journey. In Marg’ilon they were met by the city governors, who gave Gulxaniy cause to rejoice: ‘His highness Madali has given you Yangiqo’rg’on to rule!’ The governor immediately threw a banquet in Marg’ilon fortress, where he sought to win Gulxaniy’s trust with amusing stories and friendly jokes: ‘I’m a governor, you’re a governor, so there’s no need for secrets between us,’ he insisted.

  Gulxaniy kept a cool head on his shoulders, parrying with his own jokes: ‘A pock-marked butcher found a mirror when he was out walking. When he saw his ugly reflection, he lost his temper and smashed the glass, saying “Would you find anything good lying on the road?”’

  The governor laughed long and loud, his flushed face reddening further; still he pressed Gulxaniy, ‘Go on, tell us where you’ve been, what you’ve seen. Tell us all about it.’

  Gulxaniy continued: ‘A fox was walking down the road. It was pitch-dark. Snow and rain were coming down constantly, so the streets had turned to mud. The fox came across a young camel, sprawling in the mud and covered with dirt: the slime was glued to every hair on its back. The camel had escaped from the caravan leader; it was running away to the sun-baked meadows. Now it had encountered the fox. The fox greeted the camel and asked how it was doing: “Oh, your highness, you must be tired, where have you come from?” The camel replied, “I’ve come from the baths.”

  ‘“The fox replied, ‘Good for you, you speak the truth, but you’re nice and clean only from your head to your legs. To judge by your legs, you used the bath water only on your head and legs. Or had the bath attendant died and you couldn’t find anyone to help you?”’

  The oafish governor burst out laughing again, swaying from side to side and slumping onto the cushions.

  After their instruments had been tuned, musicians assembled, and everything was done that was usually required for a party; music accompanied the conversation. Gulxaniy was not affected by the tiring journey or by the sweet wine, but the music relaxed him and, without getting up from his cushion, he fell into a deep sleep. As he did, his hand unconsciously strayed to the pocket where the sharp-eyed governor now detected a slight bulge.

  The governor deftly snatched two letters from the pocket, and a dozen soldiers who had been lurking out of sight bound Gulxaniy’s hands and feet and stuffed him into a woollen sack, which they flung that same night into the turbulent river.

  Chapter 4

  Chess

  The NKVD’s millstones creaked into action. In the course of that night, many of the prisoners who lay close to Abdulla, packed like sardines, were summoned for interrogation; some would come back in an hour or so, downcast and sometimes physically beaten, while others didn’t return until after daybreak. Naturally, nobody in the cell could sleep. Only recently the prisoners had been waiting for their turn to tell a story; now they were waiting to be summoned for interrogation, secretly rehearsing what they would say and how they would act.

  If Abdulla had learnt anything from a life lived among Uzbeks, it was how to converse with them: he knew the importance of frank discussion and give-and-take chats. His novel Past Days had been written in the form of a series of conversations, one after another: no movement, no violent action, no wild confusion.

  The great Mir Alisher Navoi had good reason to name the Gatherings of the Elegant as one of his greatest works. Abdulla recalled the Babur-nama by Shah Babur: ‘One day, during a session of chess, Alisher Navoi was stretching out his leg. He touched Binoi’s behind. Navoi made a joke of it, “It’s a strange problem, isn’t it: if you stretch out your leg in Herat, you touch a poet’s backside.” Binoi replied, “And if you tuck your leg under yourself, you also touch a poet’s backside!”

  From picturing these two great men playing chess, and easing the tension from time to time with a joke or a saying, Abdulla’s thoughts moved to his local tea-house in Samarkand. There, he had witnessed interminable conversations, or cheap talk as Josiyat would put it, carried on between friends playing chess.

  One really skilled player was the poet Elbek. Whether it was because of something curmudgeonly in his nature, or whether he was just very cautious, or just combined meanness with the peculiarities of being a poet, he ‘rubbed everyone’s nose in the dirt’, whether they were Uzbek poets or prose-writers.

  In the years when they were all studying in Moscow, they once went together to Maryina Grove, which was full of Russians enthusiastically playing chess. This was the time when Alyokhin and Botvinnik were at the height of their fame, and every Russian with a chess set fancied himself a great player.

  Being strangers away from home, the Uzbeks hung on to every penny, but Elbek was like a young cockerel eager to do battle. ‘Forget it,’ his horrified friends told him. ‘We don’t have much money as it is, don’t go and lose it to the Alyokhins!’ But Elbek gave them all the slip. In twelve moves he had one of the Russians check-mated, his Uzbek friends clamouring, ‘Play for money! For money!’. Thanks to Elbek’s mercenary nature, the Uzbeks’ kitty trebled in size in the time they spent in that park. How could the unsuspecting Russians have known that they were dealing with the heirs of Navoi and Binoi?

  Madali, who had taken the title of Khan before he had even put on a Khan’s gown, was majestically reclining on his side, playing chess with his cousin Hakim, who sat with his legs tucked beneath him. Hakim’s pieces were clearly doing well, his castles and bishops were excellently positioned, he could end the game in no more than ten moves; he had his queen waiting in the wings ready to unsheathe her sword and do battle at a moment’s notice. Madali was fuming, seemingly about to explode with rage and frustration, when Hakim’s skill abruptly failed him: one clumsy move, and his knight was swiftly taken by Madali’s cornered bishop. Madali didn’t hide his smile. Affectedly casual, he told Hakim:

  ‘My soldiers have uncovered a plot.’

  ‘Oh yes? What sort of plot?’ Hakim frowned at the board, too absorbed by the game to look up.

  ‘Your Oyxon wrote a letter to a young relative of hers, and we’ve seized his reply from the messenger.’

  Not ‘my mother’, nor ‘my stepmother’; ‘your Oyxon’. Hakim could hardly fail to detect the ominous note in this. He knew Madali had not forgotten how he, Hakim, used to respond to Madali’s improprieties towards Oyxon by threatening to tell his father Umar. Hakim had made a wrong move on purpose. Then, whatever you did, it was impossible to undo the damage caused by that move. The consequence of one blunder was an impasse with no way out.

  ‘This was actually found in her possession?’ Hakim asked, his voice showing how perturbed he was; as he spoke, he moved a useless pawn towards his opponent’s knight.

  ‘No, there was an intermediary, that’s who we caught.’ Madali took Hakim’ pawn with his queen ‘He has been sentenced to death.’

  ‘Who was he?’ asked Hakim, suddenly exhausted.

  When he saw how unsettled his opponent was, Madali’s eyes blazed.

  ‘It was the man they called Gulxaniy,’ he said, practically spitting out the name.

  Hakim looked at Madali in horror.

  ‘I’ve won!’ Madali crowed, finishing the game in a way that would have be
en brusque in any dialect. ‘You’re all traitors!’ he added. ‘I’m going to crush the lot of you, one by one! Everyone who has committed fornication will be stoned as sharia law prescribes.’ Then he began to laugh in a very odd way, far too knowing for his years, a laugh like the grinding of millstones.

  —

  While waiting for his turn to be interrogated, Abdulla only managed to get to sleep just before dawn. He had no dreams, pleasant or otherwise. If Jur’at hadn’t called out ‘Get up!’ in the morning, he might have slept through noonday prayers as well as morning prayers. But he awoke with a clear head, as if he’d slept through the night rather than merely snatched a scant few hours. Sodiq was lying next to him, too distressed to get up; on Abdulla’s other side, Muborak’s place was empty. ‘They took him away,’ Sodiq said when he saw Abdulla’s puzzled expression. Abdulla took his turn to go to the corner and relieve himself and then to wash his face and hands, something vaguely like an Islamic ablution (‘God have mercy on me!’); then he sat down on his quilt. He wondered whether Sunnat might come today. If he did, he wouldn’t have had time to visit Abdulla’s home. He’d hardly go mid-week, on a working day. In any case, shouldn’t he be cautious? Suppose the house was being watched by a policeman or somebody? God forbid they should find Sunnat going there. If he came today, then Abdulla would find an opportunity to speak to him, to warn him to be careful, to get a message through a neighbour – Yusuf, he could be trusted – rather than going straight to Rahbar herself. All right, let’s wait until they bring breakfast.

  As days and then weeks passed and Gulxaniy still failed to return, Oyxon began to worry. Worry was not the word: she began to panic, she was bewildered, utterly distressed. She was besieged by countless thoughts, but whom could she tell of her inner suspicions and alarms; if only she had someone to confide in.

  Umar’s sister Oftob had been like a mother to Oyxon, but after the death of the Emir and perhaps because of Nodira’s reluctance, or because of the angry insistence of Nodira’s darling offspring, the new Emir, she had been removed from court under various pretexts. Now, according to the gossip of the older harem ladies, she’d been packed off to perform Haj.