The Devils' Dance

by Hamid Ismailov

  Hakim, her stepson, who once used to drop in from time to time and bring news, was now in a depressed state and walked about looking like thunder.

  Poor Oyxon found herself all alone in the palace harem. She could not go to Shahrixon to see her siblings, since she was in mourning and unable to leave the palace.

  One sleepless night, her mind clouded by dark thoughts, she sensed somebody’s silhouette at the window. Alarmed, she immediately called for her maidservant: ‘Gulsum, take a look by the door, someone seems to have passed by.’

  Gulsum, who was busy with her own affairs, didn’t hesitate: she went out to listen. She came back instantly and whispered to her mistress: ‘Our new Emir, dead drunk.’

  Oyxon needn’t have sent her servant-girl out: the young Emir staggered in after her.

  ‘Greetings… Mother, dear…’

  Drink seemed to have knotted Madali’s tongue, leaving him stuttering his words. He could barely stay on his feet. Drunk or not, he was as sly as ever; his words as he entered Oyxon’s chambers were those of an affectionate son visiting a beloved mother, but his manner went much further: he pressed his head against Oyxon’s breast in a way that was far from innocent.

  Overcoming her fright, Oyxon used both her hands to push Madali’s head back, then forced herself to plant a chaste kiss on his forehead, above those greedy eyes. He plumped himself down next to her.

  ‘My dear mother, sweet mother… how I’ve missed you…’

  Oyxon was under no illusion; the teenaged Emir was only pretending to be drunk, behaving as though he felt for Oyxon the same affection he owed to his mother Nodira. Initially unsure how best to respond, Oyxon quickly made up her mind.

  ‘Gulsum, tea! As quick as you can, and make it nice and strong!’ As soon as the servant left to put the kettle on the hearth, Madali dropped his slurring act.

  ‘You’re too harsh! The only tea I want to drink comes straight from your sweet hands…’

  ‘Gulsum!’ Oyxon shouted in alarm. ‘Attend to our Khan, give him water to wash his hands, and wait by him in case he needs anything else!’

  Madali reverted to his previous infantile manner. ‘My wonderful mother, my darling love… I’d give my life for my lovely mother… May you be as bounteous as the water, maidservant.’

  Drying his hands and face with a towel, Madali gave Gulsum a furtive pinch before grunting at her: ‘Off you go, Gulsum, bring us your tea.’ The servant picked up the water ewer and went out to the yard.

  Madali recited:

  ‘Alas, because my beloved won’t be my beloved,

  Her grief slays me and she does not care.

  My father wrote those words for you… I like these verses more… How about you, my love?’ he said.

  This sort of incident had occurred before, but now Oyxon was dealing not with a delinquent prince, but a fully enthroned Emir. Previously, she had been merely embarrassed; now, she felt disturbed to the bottom of her heart. She hurriedly summoned Gulsum again, but the cold weather was making the water slow to boil, and the girl was delayed. The young Emir seized his chance, speaking even more eagerly:

  ‘Why should I hide from you that I have fallen in love?

  There is no law to make the innocent deny it.’

  By now Gulsum had returned with the tea, and Madali resumed his drunken act.

  ‘Today it’s going to snow, somebody or other put two letters in my pocket… letters in my dear mother’s hand, in Oyxon’s hand…’ he said, as he pulled out two crumpled letters from his breast pocket, each folded over twice, and began to read out one of them. Oyxon recognised it at once, the letter she had written to Qosim, written on condition that it had to be given back: she felt faint.

  Madali drank his fill of the tea he had been served, gave Gulsum another swift pinch, then added:

  ‘There’s no need, my love, to complain about a letter,

  What mirror doesn’t have a touch of rust?’

  No slurring, no tottering: he got up from where he was sitting and left through the door, his steps swift and firm.

  —

  About half an hour later, Muborak returned to the cell, his spirit broken; he was followed by two Russian soldiers pushing a trolley with a jerry-can of gruel and a cask of tea. Abdulla looked through the open door behind them, thinking he might spot Sunnat’s silhouette, but there was no sign. Perhaps it’s his shift tomorrow, he told himself, determined to make the best of things.

  Again, the unappetising, tasteless soup; again, another day. Muborak had sat down next to him; his arms and legs trembling, he seemed too weak to even think about food. Indifferent to his surroundings, he went on moving his lips in a whisper. Abdulla decided to listen.

  ‘… comrade interrogator… in 1933 I was in London. I visited the grave of Karl Marx – “Proletariats of the world, unite!” The place was called Highgate… Then I went to the house of a relative called Philip Sosoniy. It was a big park called Cockfosters. Everyone has been there, from Charlie Chaplin to the Queen. The banquets you could have there, comrade interrogator!’

  Muborak kept on talking, so quietly that it was almost inaudible.

  Once Abdulla had finished his millet porridge, he got up to hand his bowl to the soldier-cooks. When he returned to his place, Muborak was telling Sodiq something, while Sodiq chewed his bread. Eavesdropping on a prison conversation is not approved of, but Abdulla couldn’t help overhearing, however much he tried to block his ears to Muborak’s words.

  ‘I have a photographic memory: if I see something, I remember it forever.’ Muborak tapped his forehead. ‘Philip Sosoniy showed me the document which got Colonel Stoddart thrown into a pit on 31 December.’ When Abdulla heard the date, he shuddered and, without feigning anything, turned to face Muborak, who continued: ‘Kamron, the Shah of Herat, wrote a letter on 20 August 1838: “O Emir, dear friend, I write in honour of our friendship. Great Britain is a very good country, it respects Muslims greatly. But it has become known that you have done something no Muslim ruler has done: you have arrested an envoy of Great Britain, Colonel Stoddart. Woe is you! Release him at all costs, and I shall intercede on your behalf.”

  ‘My friend Philip let me see Colonel Stoddart’s letters, a great pack of them. One said, “On 8 July I left the dungeon and was free.”’ (At this point, Abdulla heaved a sigh of relief.) ‘“Believe me, I was taken to the executioner where they put a spade in my hand and told me to dig my own grave. As I said, his highness the Emir pardoned me. I was summoned before him and told, ‘I’m giving you some soldiers of mine, you will be in charge of them!’ I was then staying in the house of the Chief of Police.”

  ‘Another letter says, “The Emir has left for Samarkand. He ought to be advised not to hurry back. The English have taken over Kabul and rumour-mongers have raised the alarm. They’re saying that the English will conquer Bukhara too, because I was thrown in a dungeon. The Emir is on his own, he doesn’t trust any of his experts, and won’t listen to any advice. The vizier seems to be doing a lot of good for me.”

  ‘Stoddart’s last letter concludes, “The Chief of Police is ill, so I asked him to let me stay with his brother. I’m writing in the light of the moon from his brother’s veranda, and Muborak, my loyal friend, is sitting next to me.” That’s what it says.’

  At these last words Abdulla began to have serious doubts as to the plausibility of this story.

  —

  During the day, too, a couple of men were summoned for interrogation, but this was not the grim bustle of the night-time: leaving the cell during the hours of day was quite different. Abdulla recalled Cho’lpon’s lines:

  The last light’s gone… And from afar

  A terrible wailing hits the ear,

  Splitting the silence of the night

  What?

  What is it?

  What’s that sound?

  Oh, I canno
t help but hear.

  Is it the chant of some evil sprite,

  Or monsters bellowing underground,

  Or devils dancing on the hills,

  Or feasting in the steppe wolves’ lair?

  Maybe the night’s crying out its ills,

  Or daytime’s howling its despair?

  Abdulla loved Cho’lpon’s poetry more than anyone else’s. If in his younger days he had devoted himself to poetry rather than prose, this was the sort of thing he would be writing now. Not that he would have equalled Cho’lpon, but in Cho’lpon’s poems Abdulla found the most precise expression of his own most intimate feelings. Cho’lpon had put his finger on, and seemed to dictate, the very words that he himself would have used.

  ‘An unacquainted acquaintance’ was Abdulla’s phrase for it. In actual fact, when he wrote a prose piece, it too was a representation of this same ‘known unknown’ world. The known, the everyday, the petty and trivial, once plunged in the light of the unknown – and what was unknown, frightening and alien takes on a real existence and reverts to its real self.

  In Cho’lpon’s poem the ‘last light’ going out, ‘the silence of the night’, the ‘monsters bellowing underground’ are all of the same order. If Abdulla had learnt anything from any of his contemporaries, then it was without a doubt from Cho’lpon. The compositional harmonisation in Night and Day was itself a cosmic revelation. And Cho’lpon’s innovations were not confined to poetry: he had introduced to the Uzbek novel a way of harmonising events and characters, balancing one love affair with another, or a fictional act of loyalty with a historical betrayal.

  As well as being a fine stylist, Cho’lpon was a very modern writer. He never hesitated to employ so-called literary devices, whereas Abdulla was warier, always questioning whether readers would understand the significance of this or that. Abdulla had used some aspects of this style in his novella Obid the Pickaxe, but hadn’t been completely happy with the work.

  God grant that he get out of here safe and sound; then he would finish his tale of Oyxon and follow it up with a new, more hard-nosed novel, set in modern times. But would he dare write about the things he’d witnessed in this place? Jur’at the cell elder, Muborak the Jew, Mulla Shibirg’oniy, Rafail the Tatar, Vinokurov the Russian interrogator, Sunnat the Uzbek soldier… above all, he’d be writing about himself, his thoughts and his moral sufferings, his dreams and frustrations, the plans he’d conceived, leaving absolutely nothing out.

  —

  Abdulla was well aware of the enormous importance of tiny details for his story. So-called trivia was precisely what made a novel plausible and entertaining or, as he considered it, ‘well-irrigated’. That was why he tirelessly and persistently collected details, trying hard to get at the very roots of every future hero. After that, his characters would begin to live their lives according to their nature. Jan Witkiewicz was one of these heroes. Abdulla hadn’t yet begun to write about him, but he had sensed the presence of something that could be used in his story in this well-travelled man of the world. Why don’t I get the professor to talk about him? he wondered, and approached the man who was selflessly enlightening the others sitting around him.

  ‘May I join your circle?’ he asked in Russian.

  The professor didn’t stop talking; he simply nodded as he went on with his narrative. ‘We were excavating at Dalvarzin at the time, and some very old men explained to me that the etymology of the place meant, ‘Dal’s Wrestling’. Ali had seized Termez and was advancing to the north. There was a moat around Dalvarzin, full of water. When he reached the water, Ali couldn’t see how to take the fortress. Ali was a tightrope walker: he threw a rope across the moat, apparently to reconnoitre; the daughter of the ruler of Dalvarzin fell in love with him. The girl wrote a letter to Ali, declaring her love. Ali replied, “If you love me, tell me where the water in the moat comes from.” The girl advised him, “Throw a straw into the Tupalang river and dam the flow where the straw enters the moat.” Ali did as she advised. When he captured the fortress, everyone in it had been reduced to a bestial existence. Only one dog was still moving. “This is my father Dal,” said the girl. Ali asked, “What did your father feed you on?” “Bone marrow,” the girl replied. “If you betrayed your father who fed you on bone marrow, could I expect any loyalty from you?” Ali hacked the girl to pieces. And that was how the place came to be called Dalvarzin.

  Abdulla sat listening intently to this story. A pity there was no place for it in his own novel: it was lovely, though a bit of a muddle. When the professor came to the end of his story, he turned to Abdulla, as if to say, ‘Fine: I’m at your service.’

  Abdulla introduced himself: ‘Abdulla Qodiriy.’

  ‘Zasypkin,’ the man responded.

  ‘Yesterday you were talking about Jan Witkiewicz: I’m planning to write a book about those times…’

  ‘Planning?’ the professor responded archly. ‘Isn’t that rather risky in a place like this?

  ‘All the same, I’d like to know a bit about Witkiewicz.’

  ‘What about him? Witkiewicz arrived in Bukhara in around 1836,’ said Zasypkin, switching to Uzbek. ‘Precisely a hundred years ago.’

  ‘Speak Russian, please: as a child, I attended a Russian-language school. The language holds some wonderful memories for me.’

  The professor reverted to his mother tongue. ‘On 31 December 1835, ‘Jan Witkiewicz entered Bukhara with a caravan. At the customs house the caravan was met by the Chief Minister himself. This vizier summoned Witkiewicz and asked: “Are you a Russian?”

  ‘“I am,” Witkiewicz said.

  ‘“Why have you come here?”

  ‘“By chance. I was travelling to retrieve prisoners from the Kazakhs. Snow covered the tracks, so I thought I might as well use the time to see Bukhara.”

  ‘“Do you have goods?”

  ‘“No.”

  ‘“How about money?”

  ‘“I have 200 gold roubles. Here, see for yourself!” Witkiewicz showed his purse to the Chief Minister. The vizier’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, but he was too embarrassed to take this money openly, so he looked for a pretext.

  ‘“In Bukhara, there is a law for everything, and that law says that you have to pay customs duty.”

  ‘“For us, too, the law is above everything. With pleasure!’ Witkiewicz assented.

  ‘“Do you know Alexander?” the Chief Minister suddenly asked.

  ‘“The Macedonian?”

  ‘“Not him: Alexander Burnes.”

  ‘“Ah, you mean the traveller? He praised you, Chief Minister, to me…”

  The Chief Minister laughed briefly.

  ‘“That Alexander gave me a book as a present…”

  ‘“What was the book called?”

  ‘“It had gold lettering…”

  ‘“And its title?”

  ‘“The binding was studded with precious stones…”

  ‘By now Witkiewicz had allowed his pistol and rifle to be made visible. The Chief Minister seemed somewhat taken aback, and began calculating how much customs duty he should take from the Russian.

  ‘“We take a fortieth part from Muslims; non-Muslims pay double. Armenians and Indians pay twenty per cent. That’s what Alexander paid. As for Russians… ten per cent.”

  ‘“I’ll check with the Khan,’ the Chief Minister concluded. ‘If we’ve taken more than the legal amount, we’ll give it back.”

  And that was how Witkiewicz entered Bukhara.’

  —

  Jur’at clapped his hands to call for attention. ‘Cleaning day, lads. If the camel shakes its back, the load goes to the donkey, as they say. Starting on the left, everybody takes turns to carry their bedding to the opposite corner, and without getting dust everywhere, do you hear? Sand gets into the well without food, you don’t need me to tell you. Sodiq, you’re the youngest, so
ak the broom so you don’t just spread all the dust about – got it? Then I’ll begin!’ Jur’at rolled up his bedding and carried it off to the corner by the door where the privy was; there, he unrolled and shook each item out one by one. Meanwhile Sodiq dampened his broom and started sweeping Jur’at’s place clean.

  Someone in the corner grumbled: ‘Two people mustn’t sweep at the same time, it’s a bad omen, there’ll be a corpse leaving the house…’

  Although Abdulla heard this remark, Jur’at was apparently too taken up with his work to grasp what was said, and the job went on as it had started.

  When everything was cleaned up, the refuse was piled up in a corner and the brooms were stacked vertically over the pile. The same voice as before grumbled barely audibly from the corner: ‘If you stand a broom on end, it’s a bad omen…’ But this time nobody paid any attention.

  ‘If your heart is sure, you needn’t complain to the world,’ said Jur’at, puffing up his chest. Abdulla knew the verse which contained the words ‘the heart is pure’, but Jur’at’s rather perverse character had now altered the line, and Abdulla rather liked the way it now applied to himself.

  ‘Come on Muborak, tell us about the English: we’re fed up with this life, skulking about: “White and gold the caravans…”’

  The eager little figure of Muborak rushed forwards to the place of honour and, without a word of introduction, he went straight to his story: ‘I told you about the spies, comrade interrogator.’ (Only Abdulla seemed to notice this slip.) ‘The Emir had imprisoned Stoddart once before, and again, he ordered him to be put away. After this second arrest, the Emir personally handed Stoddart over to the custody of his butler, who put the Englishman in a servant’s room, without food. Naturally, Stoddart fell ill and had to have a doctor come and look at him.