The Devils' Dance

by Hamid Ismailov

  The thick-set Englishman offered Abdulla some of his bread, and tea which, oddly, was served in an earthenware bowl. The bread was a real flat loaf, and the tea was made with proper green leaves, not the brick tea Abdulla was now used to. ‘They’re mean with the water, but not with the food’: the NKVD’s attitude to foreigners was puzzling.

  After a breakfast, the foreigners washed their faces and rinsed their mouths with what was left of the tea. They signalled to Abdulla to do the same, before moving back over to their bedding. Abdulla washed himself in the remaining hot tea; when he put his hand in his pocket, he found the handkerchief, slightly blood-stained, but still smelling of attar of roses. Pulling it out to dry his face and hands, he glanced around again. Was this Vinokurov’s idea of humane treatment?

  The smell of perfume was unmistakeable as it spread round the pit. The Englishmen seemed to detect it, and gave Abdulla a meaningful look when he went back to his place.

  It took time for a conversation to take shape, and when it did, it was fragmentary: it got no further than: ‘What do you do for a living?’, ‘How old are you?’, ‘Do you have a wife and family?’. The Englishmen questioned Abdulla more than he did them, but he still managed to learn that the older one had a wife and children, and the younger one was single but had an elder brother working in Afghanistan.

  They went on stumbling and stammering, but an hour passed without the conversation making any sense. Then the two foreigners had a long exchange of opinions in English, before they asked Abdulla’s pardon and sat down to play their everyday game, which involved sweeping aside the hay and straw on the floor, drawing a grid like a chessboard in the earth, and then filling in the grid with words.

  Abdulla didn’t understand the words but he had no trouble grasping the game itself. For example, the old man would get three points for writing the three-letter word ‘dot’; then the red-headed man would add two letters to make a longer word and thus get five points. The words could be extended horizontally or vertically. It took them an hour to fill all sixty-four squares. Abdulla judged by the big man’s laughter and the old man’s dour expression who had won and who had lost.

  When the old man lost, he frowned and picked up his Bible. The younger man, flushed with success, began a conversation with Abdulla in Ottoman Turkish, which the old man could not understand.

  ‘Have you been to Kokand?’ he asked Abdulla, using the familiar form of the verb.

  The familiarity made Abdulla squirm, but he remembered that Turks addressed everyone like that, indiscriminately.

  ‘Yes, I’ve been there. I’ve even written a book about it,’ he replied. ‘That’s what I do: I’m a writer. My novels Past Days and A Scorpion under the Altar are both set partly in Kokand…’ But this, of course, was too much for the Englishman, who clearly had no idea what Abdulla was talking about.

  ‘I have something,’ he said. ‘From Kokand, but I cannot read it.’

  Opening what looked like an amulet from around his neck, he extracted a fragment of what looked like Kokand paper: he proffered it to Abdulla somewhat boastfully. Abdulla took the piece of paper – though he almost dropped it in astonishment when he saw that it was indeed genuine ancient Kokand paper – he unfolded it and read the couplet, written in Arabic script:

  Now Russian, now Circassian, now Muslim, now Christian,

  Between one world and the other I can’t find room for the shahada prayer.

  ‘It’s from a ghazal by our great poet Mashrab. Do you understand it? Mashrab says, “Today I’m a Russian, tomorrow a Circassian” – you know, from the Caucasus. Do you know the Caucasus? Baku, Mount Elbrus, that’s where the Caucasians live. “The day after tomorrow I’m a Muslim, and the day after that, an unbeliever”.’

  ‘Why would you be a Russian today?’ the Englishman asked. ‘You’re an Uzbek, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m an Uzbek. Mashrab was speaking metaphorically; he meant, “I can be whoever I want: Russian, Circassian, Muslim, unbeliever…”’

  ‘Does he say that if you become a Russian, an unbeliever, you’ll be killed?’ the Englishman asked, muddling the sense of the verse even more.

  ‘Look,’ Abdulla tried another tack, ‘forget all that. Were you able to be a Muslim here?’

  The Englishman looked suddenly uneasy, glanced at his elderly compatriot and mumbled something in English.

  Abdulla was baffled by this reaction: what could he have said that had touched a sore point? Then the younger man looked at him and said in a solemn voice: ‘My faith is between me and God: it would be easier for me to die than to desert it. Even though my friend here may have pronounced the shahada. After all, as it says in the Qu’ran, “La ikrakha fi ed-din, there is no compulsion in faith.” I was invited here as a guest, so I deserve to be treated like one, respectfully and honourably.’

  He reached out for the Kokand paper; Abdulla put it back in the amulet and hung it around the man’s neck.

  —

  The Englishmen also had their meals lowered on a rope, like a bucket being lowered into a well, and theirs came in a wooden tub, not an old jerry-can. Abdulla had judged correctly: special food was reserved for the Europeans. Theirs was some sort of fatty stew, with three hot flat loaves to mop it up and a pot full of fragrant green tea.

  The older man, now somewhat cheered, used the end of his spoon to make a mark on the wall. ‘So we don’t lose count of the days,’ he said.

  They eagerly devoured the fatty stew, served on a real plate: they wiped it clean with pieces of bread, which they then ate. The older man then said: ‘My friend suggests we play Criss-Cross in Farsi.’

  Abdulla consented, they cleared the straw from the ground again and drew a grid.

  ‘In Latin or Arabic letters?’ asked Abdulla.

  ‘Latin,’ said the younger Englishman. ‘You start.’ He had written in the centre of the grid: ‘Oyxon’.

  ‘Are you fond of the theatre?’ asked Abdulla. If they’d been to Kokand there was a good chance they’d seen a performance of Maysara’s Antics.’

  The Englishman shrugged: he hadn’t understood. Abdulla sang him sotto voce an aria:

  Now the contract has been signed

  Oyxon is forever mine.

  Maysara, cook a dish of plov,

  Today I consummate my love.

  The younger Englishman then said in Turkish: ‘Write down the verse for me. Did you compose it yourself?’

  ‘No, they’re by my late friend Hamza Niyazi,’ said Abdulla; he took the Bible the Englishman proffered and, whispering ‘God forgive me’, used the Englishman’s sharp pencil to write on the last page, which was blank, the verses composed by his friend, a poet who had been an unbeliever and a ladies’ man.

  The game went on.

  —

  Supper came earlier here: they hadn’t yet digested the stew served for dinner when a tub of milk-stewed rice came down from the ceiling. Was everyone treated so generously while they waited for Moscow to confirm their death sentence?

  One thing in particular struck Abdulla about the two Englishmen. While they were frank and devoted to one another, they were at the same time mercilessly sarcastic. The old man was somewhat reserved and formal, whereas the younger was more rough and ready, yet with a severe, austere air, and this must have been the reason for the nature of their interaction.

  The older man’s official status was reflected in his uniform, which looked like a railwayman’s, whereas the red-headed Englishman wore a mishmash of European trousers and a ragged sheepskin coat that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the streets of any Uzbek town. The way they ate their rice and milk – Abdulla’s fascination overcame his sense of decorum, and he couldn’t help but steal a look – was further proof of their strange habits. The old man rolled the rice in his mouth from side to side, chomping at it, while the younger man gulped it down almost without chewing. After
finishing their supper in silence, they put their bowls back in the tub and began drinking tea. Brewing green tea so late was not a good idea; Abdulla sighed at the thought of the night ahead.

  Each man surrendered to his own thoughts; their mood now turned from the day’s events and hovered on the verge of a sort of despair.

  Once they had drunk their tea, the Englishmen reverted to their own language, discussing things between themselves. Abdulla felt a little awkward, not sure whether he ought to move away and leave them to their own devices, or whether that might be construed as rude. Then the younger one addressed Abdulla in Turkish: ‘If we have a talk with the city’s Chief of Police and get you released from here, would you take a letter from us?’ At first Abdulla thought he had misunderstood; he looked to the old man, who repeated the same thing word for word in Farsi.

  Abdulla was at a loss. There were several reasons for doubt. This situation was so far outside his experience… and to be turned into a courier? Abdulla had his pride: this was not, after all, some English prison, this was Uzbekistan, Abdulla’s motherland, where he enjoyed a certain standing. Even in prison, such hierarchies were still respected – no, especially in prison, where God knows there was little else to cling to.

  All right then, let’s dismiss all that as the obtuse arrogance of Englishmen; what did they mean by ‘having a talk with the city’s Chief of Police’? Were they seriously suggesting that they had some power over such a man? If so, what on earth were they doing here? They were prisoners themselves, what was this nonsense about them being able to get Abdulla released? He had already fallen for one April fool; he wasn’t about to be taken in again. As Trigulov said, underneath all this there is a gigantic PROCESS, not a natural drift. But the Englishmen continued, in all seriousness, trying to inveigle him.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the younger one, ‘there’s nothing subversive in the letter, it’s only a request to some people in London, to whom we owe money and made promises, to carry out our last wishes.’

  Abdulla grew wary again. There was every possibility that this was all some trick of the NKVD’s; a piece of theatre. Petty tricks were played by petty men like Trigulov; someone like Apresyan might try his hand at a bigger deception. Suppose Abdulla took the bait and accepted the letter, wouldn’t they then have enough to frame him on charges of spying and fraternising with foreign nationals?

  ‘Here, you can see for yourself,’ said the younger man, taking a thin sheet of folded paper from the older man and offering it to Abdulla. Abdulla unfolded the letter and glanced at its contents.

  ‘But I can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know any English.’

  ‘I’ll translate it for you,’ the big man offered. ‘It’s addressed to my elder brother.’

  My dear John,

  We’ve been here in prison 87 days without changing our clothes, eaten alive by insects. Since my confinement I have been unable to spend any money, and I calculate that all my savings together with my life Insurance will do more than make me free of debt. Send Elliot Macnaghten my love with the money which is due to him. I think that this will satisfy. William, Helen (Frank Macnaghten) are all assured of it, but I have never sufficiently thanked them for their kind pecuniary assistance, which I would now repay. To Eliza, Matilda and Emily send my best love. You, my dear John, need no declaration of my affection for you. There is an old man in London, known to Mrs Orr and to my friend Mr Allen the bookseller in Leadenhall Street, to whom I intended to give half a crown weekly for the rest of his life. I sent home a year’s allowance for him and Mrs Orr promised his pittance should not fail. In the event of my death, pray let this allowance be continued to him by some of the family. He is a worthy old man. Send my love to Mrs Orr. A great many valued friends to whom I should like to express it come to mind, but I cannot now peculiarise them all.

  At this point it was too much for the red-headed Englishman: the effort of translating, the difficulty of remembering. He made no sound, and his countenance was unaltered, but when it was clear that he was not going to continue, Abdulla took the letter from his hand, folded it again and put it in his pocket. The older Englishman went up to the younger and clapped him on the shoulder as if to comfort him. The red-bearded man stood up, picked up the teapot and wetted the hem of his shirt with the tea dregs. Then he went to the older man, gently removed the latter’s uniform and began anointing with his shirt hem the sores and ulcers and carbuncles which covered his flesh. Then both of them kneeled facing the wall and began to pray aloud.

  Abdulla went to the other corner of the pit, sat down, spread his gown over the straw and began reciting the prayers he had missed. In the darkened cell one prayer was in English: ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, As it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever.’; the other was Muslim: ‘In the name of Allah the merciful, Praise to Allah, the Lord of the inhabitants of the world, the merciful, the forgiving, the lord of the Day of Judgement. We bow down to thee and we call on thee for help: lead us along the straight road, the road of those whom thou hast blest, not of those who have incurred thy wrath, nor the path of the lost…’

  The prayers that evening mingled and merged, and ended alike with the same word: ‘Amen’.

  Chapter 8

  Debates

  When Abdulla awoke in the morning, Muborak was next to him as before, but all the other men around him were strangers. A different cell again. Every morning, in order to begin life anew, a man has once more to recall where he was and what happened the previous day, like an embroiderer having to pick up her stitches.

  Where had the Englishmen vanished to? Had he dreamt them? He would have sworn that you couldn’t have dreamt up such things with such clarity. Abdulla put his hand into his pocket. Yes, there it was, the letter that the red-headed Englishman had given him. He then checked his other pocket. The handkerchief, folded four times, the barely perceptible scent of attar of roses.

  Ashamed to have missed his early morning prayers, Abdulla got to his feet and looked around. Two buckets in the corner, as usual, and the walls were made of concrete. He looked at the ceiling. No hatch, just an ordinary light bulb behind an iron grille. By its weak light, he could make out the faces of some ten to fifteen prisoners lying on their backs, and his heart leapt when he saw who they were: there was Anqaboy, there was Fitrat, there was… someone Abdulla did not know. His heart pounded when he thought Cho’lpon might be there. No, he couldn’t see him. Unless he was in the far corner…

  Despite the early hour, when everyone was asleep, this cell seemed to be airier and less crowded than the previous one. Although it was half the size of the other one, there must be fewer people in it, Abdulla thought, as he hastily washed his face and hands. When he got back to his place and had a look at the far corner, alas, there was nobody he knew there, neither Cho’lpon nor anyone else. He recited the morning prayer he had missed, put his hand back in his pocket to take out the letter, quietly unfolded it in the semi-darkness, and, trying to convince himself that it was real, looked at the unintelligible words. Although it was written in English letters, when he looked at the very beginning he could read the Latin script, and when he saw ‘Bukhara, The Ark, April 1842’, his heart missed a beat. His eye immediately skipped to the end of the letter. Yes, as he had anticipated, the signature was ‘A. Conolly’. Abdulla’s head began to spin. Every day in his prayers to Allah he had asked, ‘Preserve me from madness!’ His prayer seemed not to have been granted. Now he beseeched, save me from disgrace and scandal! To lose your wits here in prison, surrounded by enemies, would be insupportable; worse, it would be downright dangerous No, he had to regain control of his mind. Yesterday had not happened. Muborak must have put this l
etter in his pocket. If he hadn’t, then Abdulla must have been distracted when Muborak showed it to him and said, ‘Brother, read this before you smoke it,’ and Abdulla must have absent-mindedly shoved the piece of paper in his pocket. All right, as soon as Muborak woke up, he’d ask him about it.

  Or was this some complicated game on the part of the NKVD? What would they have to gain from such an elaborate trick? If they were sentencing Abdulla to death, they had no need of such things.

  When Abdulla had first arrived in Moscow to study, he was given a place in a hostel on Novolesnaya Street. At the hostel he met two of his neighbours: one was the Ukrainian Sergei Berezhnoy, the other was a Kazakh, Serik Saktaganov. Both had started their studies a year earlier, and therefore took Abdulla under their wings. They shared a room, studied, ate and relaxed together, and very soon the trio was inseparable. The two senior men knew Moscow like the back of their hands; they took Abdulla to the Vakhtangov theatre, to poetry evenings at the Polytechnic Institute to see Mayakovsky, famously as tall as a lighthouse, or to see the world-famous dancer Isadora Duncan when she came to town.

  But they were not just interested in the arts: when summer came, once they were free of classes and examinations, they went to Sokolniki park, cycled at Vorobinye Hills, or watched the races at the Begovoi hippodrome.

  One day they went to a pine forest outside the city to swim in the Moscow river. Berezhnoy had grown up by the River Dnieper and was a natural swimmer, but Serik, a man of the steppes, was not to be outdone, boasting of how he used to take girls out to Lake Balkhash. Only Abdulla, who had plunged just a couple of times into the muddy waters of the Anxor, turned out to be incompetent.

  The others dived in, saying ‘Let’s swim to the other side!’ Abdulla’s heart sank, but youthful pride wouldn’t let him hang back and, reluctantly, he joined in. Although it was mid-summer, the Moscow river’s cold waters and Abdulla’s chilled body began to feel it by the time he’d swum a quarter of the way across. His heart was pounding, but pride in his courage wouldn’t let him give up, and he went on splashing away at the surface of the water. His friends had overtaken him and weren’t looking behind them. Gasping for breath, at the end of his tether, Abdulla managed to get halfway, with one silent thought striking his brain: if I turn back now, the distance is the same as if I go ahead.’ His arms and legs had lost all feeling, but he began desperately using them to fight the evil spell of the current and the freezing-cold water. The boundless current then swallowed him: it wasn’t Abdulla’s helpless arms and legs that felt it, but his throat, from which the life was draining. Just like a piece of straw, so a living being needs to swallow only two gulps of water: the Moscow river water reached Abdulla’s throat and he lost consciousness. Could death really be so quiet and anonymous?