The Devils' Dance

by Hamid Ismailov

  ‘“Tell me then, what is Russia’s attitude to us?’

  ‘“According to the latest information, you have taken some Russians prisoner. Russia is angry about this. This year they haven’t had enough camels to mount an attack, but they’ll be looking to seize the first opportunity.’

  ‘“If we returned most of their prisoners, would the Russians still have a quarrel with us?’

  ‘“As far as I know, the prisoners were just one of their many demands. Perhaps you could fill me in as to the details?” But Mirzo Rahim refused to be drawn.

  ‘“God alone knows what the Russians want.”

  —

  ‘God alone, indeed,’ Kosoniy repeated with pensive irony. Then he shook himself and looked at Abdulla. ‘Let’s hear something from you now, writer.’

  Abdulla thought for a moment, then began his story: ‘Let me tell you of an event I’ve read about in a number of books. At that time, the nobles of Kashgar wrote a letter to Madali of Kokand, complaining of the Chinese government’s oppression and asking him to send Jahangir, descendant of the seventeenth-century Uyghur ruler-saint Afaq Khoja, to unite the Muslims against the Chinese. Madali summoned his counsellors, who cautioned that the peace treaty between Kokand and China meant this plea should remain unanswered. Then the Kashgar nobility contacted Jahangir secretly, and arranged for him to be smuggled out of Kokand with a number of his devoted followers.

  ‘In a very short time, several thousand Muslims had rallied to his banner, bringing with them rifles and artillery, and Jahangir led them to Kashgar. When the Chinese government got wind of this, they went on the attack. A battle took place atop the mud walls of a saint’s tomb, and Jahangir’s army was defeated. Many men were killed, the survivors fled for their lives. Jahangir himself and forty of his close companions hid in the tombs of a nearby cemetery, where the ghost of Afaq Khoja appeared to Jahangir and reassured him of his ultimate victory.

  ‘The fact of the matter was that before the battle Jahangir had sent a summons to the Jumbag’ tribe; the latter answered willingly, though it was after dark when they arrived at the battle. Rallying the remains of Jahangir’s force, they successfully routed the Chinese army. But they were worried by Jahangir’s absence, and sent out search parties.

  ‘Then one of the searchers spotted a tomb that he had passed. But Jahangir and his forty companions seemed to have decided that this might be a cunning ruse by the infidels, and stayed put.

  ‘When it was dark, a servant disguised as a beggar was sent out to assess the situation. When the servant saw that it was really Muslims who were celebrating their victory, he couldn’t help bursting into tears of joy. The victorious Jumbag’ people saw him, and said: “Why these tears, aren’t you happy, Muslim?” It took him some time before he was able to speak to them coherently. Then Jahangir went from a tomb to the throne. Thus the hated Chinese rule in Kashgar came to an end, and a victorious Muslim government was installed.’

  —

  The next day, 10 March 1938, the interrogator summoned Abdulla again. This time he wasn’t taken to a prison room, but upstairs to one of the NKVD offices. Although the curtains were drawn over the window, the sunlight still indicated that the outside world existed. You could hear the cooing of doves, people yelling, vehicles roaring, the sounds of life coming from the NKVD courtyard.

  It was spring. When Abdulla was a young man, this was the season when he devoted himself to writing. The days began to get warmer, the flesh of tender greenery emerged from the soft earth, the apricot trees flowered the colour of roast maize, buds unfurled: all this inspired him. Later, as time passed, he changed, and began to write and plan in the long winter nights. Spring was the time to start gardening, tending the vegetable plot, and looking after the bees. Now, the vines were already bursting into leaf, filling with life-giving sap. Surely his eldest son Habibullo would have recovered by now: would he have staked the vines? For a moment Abdulla pictured his vineyard, the ladder placed against the stakes, the pure blue sky, and something else that touched him to the quick, but then he shuddered, and focussed on his immediate surroundings.

  Trigulov was sitting with another NKVD man, another accomplice who had taken part in searching Abdulla’s house. Without looking up from his papers, Trigulov pointed to a chair. Abdulla went towards it and sat down.

  Trigulov dismissed the soldier who had brought Abdulla there; the soldier saluted and left. There was a silence. Abdulla used the time to look at the furnishings of the office, hoping to learn something about the character of its incumbent. After a moment or so there was a knock at the door, and a different soldier brought in Usmonov, the head of the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Uzbek Central Committee. Once upon a time he had been a short, squat, flabby man; now he seemed to have become even shorter, thin and shrunken, and his eyes darted about like mercury. Poor wretch, was Abdulla’s immediate thought; he was like a cushion from which the stuffing had been removed.

  Trigulov gestured Usmonov towards the chair opposite him, then told the soldier to wait outside before addressing the two prisoners:

  ‘Do you know each other?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Who is this man?’ Trigulov said, pointing at Abdulla.

  ‘The writer Abdulla Qodirov… sorry, Qodiriy…’ Usmonov gabbled. The thought flashed through Abdulla’s mind: they’ve broken him.

  ‘And who is this?’ Trigulov put the opposite question to Abdulla.

  ‘Comrade Usmonov, head of the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Uzbek Central Comm­ittee…’

  ‘Former head!’ Trigulov interrupted sourly. ‘And now an opportunist Trotskyist. Isn’t that so, Citizen Usmonov?’

  ‘Quite so, comrade interrogator,’ Usmonov replied with quiet desperation.

  ‘Right, Citizen Usmonov, do you know Abdulla Qodiriy well?’

  ‘Comrade interrogator, I know Abdulla Qodiriy as a convinced, hardened, counter-revolutionary nationalist. He has hypocritically concealed his bourgeois-nationalist nature and has deceived Soviet power…’

  Usmonov said all this without drawing breath, without looking at Abdulla; he recited it quickly, like a boy scout reporting to his team leader.

  ‘Tell me, Qodiriy, has Citizen Usmonov told the truth?’

  ‘In part,’ Abdulla said. ‘I may, at one time, have been a nationalist, but I have never been a hypocrite and I have never deceived the Soviet government.’

  ‘Usmonov, does Qodiriy’s statement satisfy you?’

  ‘No, it absolutely does not. Qodiriy is lying.’

  ‘Very well: Qodiriy, do you admit your guilt?’

  At that moment Usmonov clutched his chest and sobbed. His face and hands were wet with sweat. Trigulov called for the soldier standing outside, and shoved a document he had just written towards Usmonov, as fast as if he’d burnt his hand. ‘Take him away,’ he told the soldier, ‘and see that the awkward sod doesn’t drop dead on the way.’

  Next, Trigulov showed Abdulla the record of the exchange which had just taken place, officially designated a ‘confrontation’. ‘Sign here where it says “Recorded accurately, and read by me”.’

  ‘Why should I put my signature to this pack of lies?’

  ‘Listen, my boy, you’re pushing your luck. Didn’t every word written here come out of your own mouth? It did. So sign it! You’d better not mess me around; if I get angry, I’ll bring your wife here and pull her panties off.’

  Abdulla bit his lip until it bled, and signed the papers.

  Trigulov pressed a button on what looked like a radio. ‘Next!’

  Shortly after that, there was a knock at the door and Beregin came in. This was a man who had recently been working in the Central Committee, but who had previously been Abdulla’s publisher. A charismatic man, for whom Abdulla had once had great respect.

  ‘Do you know each other?’ Trigulov began. Bere
gin, who hadn’t yet sat down, and Abdulla, who had risen to greet him, simultaneously confirmed that they did.

  ‘Who is this man?’ the interrogator asked Abdulla.

  ‘Qurbon Beregin, former director of the Central Committee Culture and Education Department.’

  ‘Correct, accused Qodiriy. Who is this man?’

  ‘Sitting opposite me is the writer Qodiriy…’ Beregin fell silent. Abdulla looked at his dimmed and shrunken eyes. He knew him as a courageous man, not the type to sell out. But Beregin would not look at Abdulla, and went on to say in a voice without intonation: ‘I know him to be a prominent participant in the bourgeois-nationalist stream of Uzbek literature. He has written major novels in an anti-Soviet nationalist spirit and has likewise helped our organisation to prepare professionals who were nationalists. He himself has never renounced his nationalism.’

  When Abdulla heard these words, the image of a drowning man clutching at straws came to mind, and he recalled Cho’lpon’s poem ‘A Hand Stretched Out’.

  Could he be pulled out by my hand?

  Was he going to cast me on the land

  To save me from the savage sea?

  Could a man as deeply lost as me,

  With his weary eyes, take my hand?

  But Trigulov cut him off mid-thought: ‘Accused Qodiriy, do you confirm this part of Beregin’s statement?’

  Abdulla felt a surge of pride in that poem, in that language, in that wretched people, in his own honest life; he lifted his head and said, ‘Yes, I confirm it.’

  And so I began to turn the pages

  Of the tragic story of the ages.

  Nervous, irritable and worse,

  As I slowly find the mood for verse.

  The clarity and firmness of this response made both the interrogator as well as Beregin take notice. A stray spark seemed to flash in the latter’s dimmed eyes.

  Trigulov hastily penned this response down on paper and leapt ahead in pursuit of his goal: ‘Comrade Beregin, tell me, was the accused Qodiriy a member of your anti-Soviet nationalist organisation?’

  The interrogator’s sharp tone made Beregin relapse to his previous abased state, and his voice was flat when he replied, ‘Yes, he was a member of our anti-Soviet nationalist organisation, headed by Akmal Ikromov and Fayzulla Kho’jayev.’

  ‘I repudiate that part of Beregin’s statement. I have never in my life been a member of any organisation.’

  ‘Beregin, Qodiriy denies it. Are there any proofs of his membership of an anti-Soviet bourgeois-nationalist organisation? Perhaps in written form… can you cite them?’

  ‘In 1932 Fayzulla Kho’jayev proposed that I should republish works by Abdulla Qodiriy written in an anti-Soviet nationalist spirit. In particular, he mentioned the novel Past Days. He drew up a contract with Abdulla Qodiriy and took it upon himself to send these works abroad. Kho’jayev would not have taken this much trouble over an outsider who was not a member of our organisation. I have kept written proof of this.’

  ‘What do you say to that, accused Qodiriy?’

  ‘I have never been a member of any organisation, including these anti-Soviet bourgeois-nationalist organisations. I’m a loner, an independent writer.’

  ‘Take that man of yours away!’ Trigulov snapped, pointing to the crestfallen Beregin.

  I began to tell these plaintive tales

  Of hands stretched out from the shore,

  Of untrodden paths through lonely vales,

  Where I seek my desire or more.

  —

  By the time Abdulla got back to his cell, everyone had lain down to sleep. Had those two short confrontations really gone on for such a long time? In his mind Abdulla went over and over the questions and answers, unable to get away from one particular thought: these men had been crushed, ground down to powder. But what did Trigulov’s threat, ‘I’ll have your wife brought here!’ tell him, what did it indicate? Could he have found evidence of Sunnat delivering a letter once a month? Should Abdulla write to Rahbar and tell her to move to the country? God forbid: those people were capable of anything. Prisoners would tremble with fear as they told stories of Room 42: might that have been the room where Vinokurov had bruised Abdulla on his first day?

  If they brought his wife in and violated her, could Abdulla stand it? What could he do to stop it? He might attack one man, but there were a thousand of them. He had said at the time that he would kill Vinokurov, and meant it; but he hadn’t done it, and his desire for vengeance had melted like the winter’s snow.

  ‘God forbid! God forbid!’ Abdulla prayed as he lay down. Rahbar had to move to the country, otherwise they would crush Abdulla with their pestles and mortars. But could he stand up to them on his own, could he summon the strength?

  —

  They said things to frighten him: ‘We’ll make you watch us behead the servants who came with you!’ Then it was, ‘Become a Muslim!’, forcing Stoddart to recite the shahada. Even this did not seem to be enough: they made him undergo circumcision under the supervision of the chief Islamic judge. The poor colonel, a man getting on for fifty, his ‘reed’ broken, wrapped in a blanket, stayed in the house of the chief of police; he pressed a piece of burnt cotton to the wound until it healed. After that he was put in the care of the Chief Minister, who housed him in his handsome guest chambers in the fortress.

  The Chief Minister took an instant dislike to Stoddart. ‘He’s not a real Muslim!’ he told the Emir. ‘He pisses standing up!’ This time the colonel was imprisoned in the ‘Cold House’, a damp and airless room more like a deep pit, where the prisoners were given only water.

  Fortunately for Stoddart, one of the jailers turned out to be a pleasant man: he helped the colonel smuggle letters out of the country by passing them on to one of his servants, who crossed the border to Afghanistan hiding in a camel’s pack-box.

  The only difference between their situations, Abdulla thought, was that Stoddart at least had his country’s support.

  His thoughts turned to the wretched Beregin again. Abdulla hadn’t known Usmonov quite so well, so his provocative language hadn’t stung him so badly, but Beregin was someone he’d respected. True, Fayzulla Xo’jayev had singled out Abdulla and Cho’lpon for his approval, calling them ‘the pride of our literature and language’ and had given them money every time he saw them. In 1932 he had in fact said, ‘It would be good to publish Past Days in Kashgar, in the Arabic script.’ But how could anyone talk of an organisation? Did an Uzbek mixing with Uzbeks now count as being a member of an organisation?

  —

  Who else was Abdulla going to be confronted with? The specific charge was membership of an anti-Soviet nationalist organisation. Had Abdulla been recruited, like a bride who was married off without being aware of it? Writers are a crazy lot, you probably couldn’t confront them with each other; if you have to confront one, then it would have to be with politicians and officials like the men he had faced the day before. Which others might they try? He had to make use of Sunnat, and get Rahbar to leave for the country as quickly as possible.

  The door opened and Abdulla’s name was called out again. Gathering his wits, putting his hands behind his back, he was about to leave when he saw it wasn’t for interrogation or confrontation but for a shave and a haircut.

  Abdulla remembered the barber, and gave him a friendly greeting as he sat down on the stool. Why decide to give me a haircut in the middle of confrontations? he wondered. ‘What more is there to discuss? Has the case been decided? Am I being prepared for execution? If they’re going to shoot me, would they sit me down first to tidy me up? Am I being made presentable before they take me to one of the higher-ups? Who?

  In prison every tiny thing takes on boundless importance: who, when, where, for what reason? Question after question worms its way into your brain. Turning it into a something like a silkworm hatchery, your thoughts are th
e mulberry leaves the larvae feed on, punctured as if by an awl. The Jewish barber wouldn’t talk in the presence of the guard, but his thoughts seemed to seek expression in his constant sighs, his sniffling and the smacking of his lips. He must have a lot on his mind, too, Abdulla decided.

  A shave and a haircut were, perhaps, the only service in prison provided by someone else. The barber’s warm hand brushing his nose and ear reminded Abdulla of his mother Josiyat washing his hair when he was a child: he couldn’t keep the tears from filling his eyes. The barber took a white napkin and discreetly wiped this moisture away while powdering Abdulla’s face.

  ‘Thank you,’ Abdulla said as he got up from the stool.

  ‘You’re wel…’ the barber began, but was instantly cut off by the soldier.

  ‘No chatting!’ the Russian barked; he quickly led Abdulla away, not back towards the cell but in the opposite direction. Where is this guard taking me?’ Has my time come, then? In such a senseless way?

  The soldier pushed open a door on his left. ‘Comrade Captain, I’ve brought him,’ he said as he saluted. When he entered the room Abdulla clenched his fists reflexively: Vinokurov. His heart began to pound. His face first turned pale, and then flushed bright red. He’s going to hit me, he’s going to hit me, he told himself, mentally preparing to hit back.

  ‘Sit down,’ Vinokurov barked, pointing to a chair by the desk; ‘You’re free to go,’ he told the soldier. The soldier retreated out into the corridor, letting the door slam shut behind him. Abdulla’s last link with the outside world was broken.

  He would grab him by the throat! He would go for his windpipe. As Abdulla sat down, the blood rushed to his eyes.

  Suddenly Vinokurov stretched out a calloused open palm to him: ‘Forgive me, Abdulla!’ he said.

  Abdulla was stunned: he felt lost. Was this a dream, or reality? Had this devil some trick up his sleeve?

  ‘Forgive me, Abdulla,’ the guard repeated in a cracked, muted voice. ‘I hit you too hard… I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me. But we’re human too, you know. I’d been drinking too much that day. I’d had it up to here,’ he said, pointing to the throat which Abdulla wanted to sink his teeth into. ‘I don’t get a New Year’s break, not even a single day off. Nothing but arrests and arrests and knocking people about.