by Anna Tambour
“You’re light as air, Ekmel! But soon enough you’ll be your old fat self again . . . ”
Burhanettin prattled silly nonsense as they made their way down the slope, his treetrunk arm supporting Ekmel, whose feet were constantly being knocked on stones and whose face was a study in grimaces, a study that Burhanettin did not attend.
The closer they got to the town, the louder Burhanettin had to speak to be heard above the din. Odd he would have thought if he had been thinking of such mundanities. Such clanging, but no smell of goat.
By the time they reached the town gates, darkness had almost fallen.
Burhanettin shouted, “I’m coming, my love.”
At sunset in Çimçim the gates would close, the çimçim district quieten, and the town criers and lamp-lighters get ready to walk the streets. At sunset, the alleys clogged with homegoers, trudging labourers, bowlegged tradesmen, stooped porters, near-sighted students—all joggled by gossips who scurried, shouting whispers.
“He’s over this way,” Ekmel said as the gates shut behind them. “I can hold.” He slipped out of Burhanettin’s grasp and limped over to the first alley, where he gripped the stone walls with both hands and pulled himself up, step by step.
Burhanettin and the donkey followed till, at a twist, the donkey hawed, pulling and then standing still, a wicker pannier on her side, caught on a rough stone in the wall. Burhanettin was stuck behind the donkey.
“Hoy, skinny!” he shouted up the alley. Ekmel would be able to crawl between the donkey’s feet and unhook the basket by slipping his wisp of a body between wall and donkey, if she didn’t kick him. But to Burhanettin’s disgust, instead of Ekmel, a giggling little boy poked Burhanettin’s behind, and the boy’s grandmother cursed. Burhanettin agreed with the hag about the donkey. But his ears burned to hear himself also compared to a barrel, in physique— and brains! He might have clouted her if her grandson and her own impressive physique and basket hadn’t been in the way.
Far ahead, Ekmel ran through the alleys with a delight he hadn’t felt since he last crunched his favourite helva (not on this trip), or was it when he thought he had sold Burhanettin the spoiled honey for an unbelievable profit? No matter. Ekmel wasn’t weighing delights against each other. He ran with thoughtless joy.
He frightened old women, grew a tail of urchins, slipped on spilt oil and laughed as he sped on. He was lithe as an eel and as shoeless.
He ran without knowing where he was going, but when he saw the cemetery, he turned into it, strolled till he found a nice tomb under a tree, and settled down to sleep. He wasn’t afraid of ghosts, not after Burhanettin.
Dawn always broke spectacularly upon Çimçimmians. If you lived there, you were accustomed to it, but Ekmel had never heard of the place. The cemetery being surrounded by the çimçim quarter, Ekmel woke screaming.
“They’re quieter than you,” said Burhanettin.
A tombstone away, the donkey was grazing flowers from a vase.
Ekmel stood up. This scene was worse than his nightmare. But wait! A bear of a constable was approaching the little group, his eyes on the donkey.
Ekmel rushed forward. “Effendi!” He smiled with all his honey- merchant charm.
The constable reeled back. He had intended to fine the owner of the beast, but now that he got an eyeful of the group, he ascertained that the gentleman standing to the side would not be in the company of this foul-mouthed ruffian who must have kidnapped him. The donkey could only have been stolen, but who is the gentleman?
“Blessings upon you,” yelled the constable to Burhanettin.
“And you,” yelled Burhanettin, wiping his forehead. “I feared for,” and he glanced at the donkey.
“Yours?” the constable stage-whispered.
“My youngest brother’s,” Burhanettin sighed.
The constable sighed along with him.
“At last,” Burhanettin mouthed, giving the constable great eye-to-eye contact, and then dropping his eyes to his right thumb, which jerked ever so subtlety, at Ekmel.
The constable pounced on Ekmel with explosive zeal. He always found nothing so refreshing to start the day, as a good beating.
“Would you like to make a statement?” he asked Burhanettin, only to retract his question with a hasty, “Don’t trouble yourself.”
Scribes are for exploits, not embarrassments. The constable pulled at his moustache, prouder than he could say for having first, noticed a mystery, and then within moments, solving the case, a case which was complicated by the glaring fact that this ruffian in hand had stolen this gentleman’s brother’s donkey. The gentleman’s brother, the constable concluded, if he is at all like my brother, is a drinking companion of this lowlife. And furthermore, the kidnapper-thief is sure to have filled those panniers with the gentleman’s own belongings, which will have to be noted in any report, and no gentleman should suffer that indignity.
He shook Ekmel, a preliminary that allowed some frustration to escape. This cockroach is sure to be wearing the gentleman’s turnip-sized watch strung from his dirty neck. The constable always wanted a watch.
“Would you like to press charges?” he bellowed at the gentleman.
Burhanettin hmmed and stroked his chin. Finally he glanced at Ekmel, who was convulsed in sobs as he hung like a dishcloth from the constable’s paw.
“A hobble for him will do, thank you,” shouted Burhanettin. “I must take him back to face . . . ” He smiled with the sadness of the magnanimous at heart.
The constable smiled back (protector of the peace to upstanding citizen) as he felt with the skill of a pickpocket, for a pocket in Ekmel’s filthy robe. When the frisk found nothing but a bony body underneath, he lifted the ruffian up high, dropped him on another tombstone, and stalked away.
Compliments
“IT’S JUST LIKE HOME,” said the beautiful woman in red, smiling at the cook who, behind a protective hand over her mouth, gaped in astonishment.
Though game to eat almost anything, Galina drew the line on the mess she’d created today. Some of the potatoes had burnt so well that they had to be chipped from the pot with a screwdriver, so today’s special (Borscht) glittered with aluminium.
The Omniscient was all a-simmer. He shoved his bowl away. “You eat hungrily, Mistress,” he said in a low, husky voice. Her earthy appetite made him feel things he’d only ever reported.
Mistress! If only you noticed that I could no more eat for love of you than I can forget your perfidy. I forgive you! But come clean with the only one who can understand you, etc.
They were the only patrons in the restaurant car, the other nine tourists having left in disgust and the locals having decided to make do with their own provisions, or starvation. Not that any of the others had tried the borscht today. The stench upon opening the door was enough.
“Umn,” said the Muse, gazing at Galina.
The Omniscient gazed at the Muse while she dipped her spoon in her bowl without once looking at what she was eating. Her eyes were glued to Galina.
Galina examined that nice old man with a waistcoat that she imagined putting her feet up on. He can’t be a pimp, but who is she?
When that woman who Savva denied admiring asked for a fourth portion, Galina said she was sorry but there wasn’t any left. The woman said she was sorry, too, and, “So delicious!” Lunch over, they left, but as the old man held the door open for her (!) the woman in red turned to Galina. “You have beautiful eyes,” she said.
Galina couldn’t lock the doors fast enough. Heart pounding, she yanked her mirror out of her pocket. Maybe the old sayings are right. She remembered her babbling grandmother’s: “What’s bad comes good whenever it would.” I’ve certainly had enough of what’s bad. “What’s good comes goodest to those who cookest.” That woman likes my cooking. Galina delayed looking for another moment: the delicious suspense made her tremble.
Then:
That horrible red mark. Still there, large and livid as ever.
And my
eyes! She shut them tight, but they leaked as memories of childhood stung her—of being called Piggy because of those bright, but deeply embedded so-called windows to the Soul.
The immaculated maculation
IN THE TOWN OF L——, the grey-coveralled members of Work Unit 4 tear down the scaffolding and walk across the road to the pavement in front of the railway station, where they look up to their great work from the necessary distance to see the broad perspective:
They look first, to the eyes. Are they successful? As explained in the Art Production directive from the Central Institute, Stance 1, Face Forward, Full Colour/ size G Facades and Banners: The focus rests in the eyes, which must be slightly unaligned. Colours: Brown 3 . . . Interpretation for Commentators: His gaze is of necessity internal, focussed beyond the obvious, to Posterity.
The eyes, which had needed 10 litres of White just for the glint of foresight, are satisfactory. The face is taller than 2 storeys, wider than a two-family apartment, and pink and smooth as a pickled pig’s foot.
That famous (in other countries) strawberry mark is nowhere to be seen. Although other teams of workers have failed to erase the blemish in every frame of every moving picture of the man, the members of this Unit have, yet again, painted the President in the manner in which the People are accustomed.
Here on the pavement in front of the train station, a collective grunt of satisfaction passes through the Unit. The morning rush is over, but the day is young as a girl. Each plans to drink her health for the rest of the day—but at the moment, with no one about, the
Unit lingers, talking shop.
“And Lenin had a receding chin,” the senior painter was saying, just as Savva rushed out of the train station’s doors.
The night before, the train had stopped for longer than the usual quarter hour at L—— Station, because of a small khu that had begun to insert itself between the verses of the train’s song, worrying the Chief Driver.
Upon inspection, the senior in Railway Repairs (which didn’t make him senior anything else, L—— being a long way from District Headquarters) informed the workers of Railway Work Unit 675645 (Valentin, Galina, Savva, the Chief Driver, etc.) that the train would be held up at the station for 24 hours. On this gloriously sunlit unscheduled holiday, most of the Unit streamed out, following the normal procedure in cases of unscheduled stops for repair.
On no condition are schedules to be changed, except by Order of the Central Office.
This most important of all directives, in practice, meant that passengers were kept in the dark informationwise, so they sat in the train past the quarter-hour stop, and then longer, and longer . . . and with the train being stopped so long, it was bound to speed off any second, so none dared even to stretch their legs on the platform.
In the recent past, Savva had spent these unscheduled holidays in his compartment, locking himself in with his daydreams, because, oh, years and years before when he’d hit a holiday in a town as big as L—— , he’d explode out of the train just like the rest of the Unit, and spend his time cavorting down the wide avenues, spending wildly. First, he’d lift his nose to scent the nearest corner barrel, where he’d buy the largest mug of tartkvass and stand in the street drinking along with the other customers. Then he’d drop his kopeks into the pear-juice vending machine just for the thrill of seeing it open its jaws and spew juice into the clouded glass. He’d join queues buying who-knows-what, though he didn’t need whatever it was. But that was not the point. The point was (the first one): he’d never bought anything anyone else would give something for. But worse, the point that hurt was that, even if he’d ever miraculously bought something that was worth trading for something good, he’d never had anyone he could give it to, for love. But back to what he used to do back when. Just before he boarded the train again, he always used to buy the day’s issue of Truth (there was never a lack of supply of that), just like a civilian.
But that was years ago.
Cavorting in towns had been a false joy. The bourgeois urge to hunt for things to have for having’s sake had withered in him. The train was home to him. Unlike the dashing Valentin who had a tie from Paris that showed the Eiffel tower, Savva never wore civilian clothing. He, who had never managed to buy or trade for anything better than a case of green plastic alligators with thermometers shoved up their backs, was no trader. And, besides, what could be as good as what he got from Galina? Now his pay, meagre as it was, had become a clump in his little hidey hole behind the samovar. And why waste money on Truth when he could (before cutting them into squares) read just what interested him amongst all the full issues left by passengers along with their spat-out sunflower-seed shells?
So, normally Savva would have hidden himself in his compartment while Valentin hit the town making better deals than any capitalist.
And Galina? She had only been in Savva’s Unit for about a year, and this was her third unscheduled holiday. The previous two, Savva had spent in his compartment, daydreaming and absentmindedly grinding his teeth while she walks the town—innocently, maddeningly, untouchably flaunting her unreachably high, pure beauty.
Today was different. Valentin had rushed off, to be sure, his lithesome form bulked out by what Savva could only imagine.
But Galina had not rushed out into the glorious sunshine to walk the wide boulevards where she stuck out her pink tongue and licked ice cream from a wooden slat, or whatever she did in these stops.
She was holed up in her compartment weeping, her eyelids puffy as mashed potato.
That was all she did now: weep. The love of Savva’s life wept when she cut potatoes. When wrapped around Savva, she wept. His assurance into her pearly ear that she was still beautiful to him made her stop her weeping, only to break out into sobs that made his ears ring as the weight of her great chest drove the air from his lungs.
Love hurts, but it also ennobles.
Savva ran out of the train determined to find that pot of magic goo that Galina wished for—that paint that would hide the mark.
Valentin said it was called Girl Cover, but Valentin was too busy helping himself, to do something for Galina. Very expensive imported stuff, Valentin had said, if you have to pay.
Savva didn’t care if it cost his savings. He was prepared to throw them away to the last kopek—for Her.
As he pushed his way through the crowd in the train station’s waiting room, he would have laughed bitterly if he were destined to be a classic character, but he wasn’t. Valentin had told him privately, with a shrug, that Girl Cover was no better a cosmetic than Galina’s desperate smooshed-rye-and-potato-flour paste. Girl Cover’s counter-revolutionary advertising always shouted New and Revolution! . . . so (Valentin laughed) those weak-minded women think it was created in their best interests.
So:
As Savva burst through the doors of the train station on his tragic quest to track down and buy for love, a pot of paint with a false claim: Works Like Magic, fate perhaps caused him to almost collide with the unmoving bulk of the grey-coveralled group that crowded the pavement: Work Unit 4.
“And is it true Stalin had so many warts, the Units called him ‘Warthog’?” the youngest, almost a boy, asked the senior who had revealed in so many words, Lenin’s receding chin.
“Not warts,” chuckled the white-haired man with the yellow- stained moustache. “Teeth. An extraordinary bite. He—”
“That’s the reason for the moustache,” the other white-haired man in the crowd interjected, turning his back on the senior’s expression.
The young one’s tender cheeks flushed, and he drew himself up into an unslouched position. “You mean,” he said, “Stalin obeyed our, your advice?”
“Ha hahaah.” The senior’s laugh turned into a nasty, back- bending, hawking cough.
Into the breach shot the second-most senior—“He was hairless as an egg.”
The boy wasn’t the only one who goggled at this news.
“Who invented the moustache?”
“The great Berentsov,” snapped the cougher, now recovered sufficiently to throw at his rival a look of two parts Yellow, one part Blue.
“Berentsov of the—” began the other.
“Excuse me,” whispered Savva, respectfully touching of the elbow of the one who seemed to know the most. “Then is it true that he” (and here, Savva glanced significantly across the street, and up). Savva had heard rumours of the President having one ball and a wooden leg, neither of which mattered to Savva, but “that he has a red mark on his face?”
The one who knew regarded Savva sternly. “Where’d you hear that?” he demanded.
Savva broke into a cold sweat. “I’m just reporting to you,” he babbled. He turned away casually, wanting with all his heart, to run.
The old man grabbed Savva’s sleeve. “You can’t believe what you see on television. Don’t you know that foreigners infiltrate the moving picture frames?”
“I don’t believe foreign infiltrators,” Savva stated fervently. Actually, he’d never seen television, his home being the train, and he’d never wanted to watch television anyway, happy to get all his news from Truth and people who knew, like Valentin.
The second most senior slapped Savva’s back, laughing. But the rest of the crowd (minus the one who seemed to know the most) was tittering, even the fresh-faced boy. The senior now smiled indulgently at Savva (who was, of course, wearing his Railways Unit uniform) in the same manner that railway workers do, of the question, “Does the restaurant car serve anything but borscht?”
“Let’s say, young man,” he said quietly, “if we were to paint him as he is, we would need forty litres of red number two.”
CHRISTIE’S
A quantity of ephemera relating to Mstislav Valer’ianovich Dobuzhinsky including a drawn New Year’s card from 1956, the artist’s jacket, his snuff box, a photo of the artist, a printed New Year’s card for 1912, a cigar box cover, a backboard, a pamphlet and thirteen bookplates for the artist’s son, Valer’ian Dobuzhinsky (22)