Lara’s mind flies to Dubai, to Sumaya’s villa, where she had used every bit of guile she had to convince Sumaya to allow her to place that phone call. She had not even known that Avo had a cell phone. She had convinced Sumaya to call the post office in Aparan and leave word that she’d call back in an hour to talk to Avo. The post office had sent someone to let the Galians know. And when she had called an hour later, Martha had answered, and given her Avo’s phone number. What a saga that was! What heart wrenching moments those were.
And now, she sits where Avo sat during that call, amazed not only at what nature has spread in front of her, but also at the incredible contrast between here and the compound in Dubai. She cannot imagine two more vastly different worlds, both physically and by what they conjure up in her mind.
“My God, Edik jan” she says at last, “what a heavy history to lay on this poor bench.”
They sit lost in the seeming infinity spread before them.
“What did you say you called this place?” she asks. “The point of truth and what?”
“And redemption.”
“Truth and redemption,” repeats Lara. She likes the phrase. “Now Edik, remember you cannot lie to me here. I want you to answer this: have you really been able to confront and quarantine everything in your past as you were telling me to do? Have you really overcome all your nightmares? I have to know the truth.”
Laurian looks at her for a long moment. There is no way to get around this girl. He is tempted to lie, and even tries to formulate the words in his mind, words that would give Lara a sugarcoated account of how he has managed to do what he has been advocating. But an entirely different word comes out of his mouth.
“No,” he says.
“Tell me,” she says, dead serious.
“Tell you? Now?”
“Tell me, now.”
Laurian hesitates for a minute.
“We were in Spain, on holiday,” he starts, speaking more slowly than usual. “With my parents and twin sisters, Arpi and Sirarpi. They were twelve, I was fourteen. We were standing in front of a statue of Don Quixote when we realized that Sirarpi was gone. Just disappeared, in broad daylight. We searched for her for two months. Those two months were the most difficult and trying times for my family. My father stayed in Spain to make sure the police did not stop searching. My mother took Arpi and me back to Switzerland because we were in school, but she would leave us with friends and join him on weekends. The police were not helpful. They said they thought sex traffickers had taken her, and it was rare that they could rescue victims of sex trafficking. Two months after she was taken, they found her in the Casa de Campo Park. There were no fatal wounds on her body. She had died from repeated rapes and beatings…” Laurian stops for a minute to manage the surge of emotion rising in his chest. When he finally catches his breath, he adds: “And malnutrition.”
Lara, who until that point had tried to avoid all physical contact with Laurian, throws her arms around his neck, unable to control her tears. Laurian remains still, staring into the vast space ahead.
“That was some thirty years ago,” he says at last. “And that, my dear Lara, I have not been able to quarantine. I am very sorry. Because I still want you to believe that it is possible to put the past firmly behind you, to render it irrelevant to your future.”
“Hush,” says the eighteen-year-old girl, holding the forty-five year old man more tightly in her arms. “I understand everything. Let it go, Edik jan. Just let it go.”
It is almost noon when they get back to the house, having lingered on the bench for a while, then walked back slowly and toured the orchard. Laurian shows her several remnants of Bronze Age walls buried in the thickets. “This place has been inhabited for thousands of years,” he says. “I can never stop wondering how they lived here, how they hunted, fought, defended themselves from the elements.”
Lara cannot focus on any of that right now. This has been an eventful walk already, with so much to process, from the will to kill the past, to the history-laden bench, to the twelve year old Sirarpi. There is no room for the Bronze Age.
Avo and Gagik are anxious to leave. There is too much to do.
Vartiter has prepared a light lunch, which, after the large breakfast that they’ve had, does not generate much interest. But Laurian insists that they have something. “You have a long drive,” he says. “Eat something light now, and Vartiter will pack something for the road.” They know better than to argue with him.
Thomas Martirosian, Anna’s divorce lawyer, calls Laurian the next day.
“Her husband seems to have some backing,” he says. “Are you sure you told me everything?”
“Everything that I knew. I don’t even know the bastard’s name.”
“His name is Hov Samoyan,” says the lawyer. “And Hov is not short for Hovannes. Hov, believe it or not, is his full, official first name. His nick name, on the other hand, is Hovo, which is…”
“Thomas, stop,” says Laurian, “enough with the name. What makes you think he has backing?”
“The poor soul has been an unemployed hooligan for almost a year. Then he gets hired as a ‘bodyguard.’ His official title on his papers is ‘security officer.’ And guess what? He gets a license to carry a firearm. He walks around with a pistol in his belt.”
“Who does he work for?” Laurian has an uneasy feeling that he already knows the answer.
“Officially, no one knows. The person who hired him is a nobody, like him. But unofficially, every one says LeFreak is behind the organization that employed him.”
“What does his organization do?” asks Laurian, knowing that Thomas will not have a clue.
“Depends on who you ask,” comes the answer, instead of the ‘beats me’ that Laurian was expecting. “Some say LeFreak imports so much from Georgia or through Georgian ports, that he needs a large organization in Lori to help with the logistics of clearing customs and distribution. Others say he is building up muscle because he is planning an expansion. You can believe or disbelieve anything you want. If this guy has the protection of LeFreak, I wouldn’t want to rush into divorce proceedings yet. He can badly damage your friend Anna when it all comes out in the open.”
“I agree. Put the divorce on hold for now. But I want to find out everything about what our man Hovo is doing. Everything, Thomas, do you understand? Don’t worry about the cost, I’ll cover it.”
“I understand,” says Martirosian.
“One more thing,” adds Laurian. “Can we put the word out that his wife is trying to formally divorce him, just to see how he will react? His reaction may give us a hint of how to proceed.”
“Edik, I have to say that it is dangerous to think about experiments like that in situations like this. But having said that, yes, I can put out the word”
“What are the risks?”
“The risk is that we’ll remind him that he has a wife. And now that he thinks he has real muscle behind him, he will get more aggressive in trying to track her down. But the bigger risk is that if LeFreak decides to back him up in the divorce process, we’ll have most judges turned against us. He’ll bribe them all.”
“De lav, Thomas,” says Laurian. “Why on earth would someone like LeFreak go into that much trouble for a minor underling, a new recruit with no record of any achievement, before you even file for divorce?”
“Just saying,” says Martirosian. “You asked about the risks. I had to tell you what the risks are.”
“If those are the risks, let’s go with it. Put the word out. I am dying to know what he’ll do.”
Chapter Nineteen
From mid-afternoon until the early hours of the morning Anastasia is usually with clients, and then she sleeps till noon. It is best to catch her soon after she wakes up. I’ve learned from the days that I used to spend at her apartment in Moscow that that’s when she can focus, but she’s not yet so awake and full of energy that it becomes difficult to keep her attention on one thing.
She answers a
fter four rings, when I’m about to hang up. Her voice is groggy.
“Anastasia, sorry if I woke you up. Is this a bad time?”
“Oh, hi Lara,” she mumbles. I hear shuffling of sheets. “I’m not home yet. Is it urgent?”
“No, sorry, it can wait. When can I call?”
“At least two hours,” she says. “If it can wait.”
“It can, don’t worry. Talk to you soon.”
I imagine Anastasia in some hotel room, with a client who was drunk the night before and agreed to pay her an all-night fee. He probably fell asleep after having sex once, and snored all night, keeping Anastasia awake. But all-night clients do not feel they’ve had their money’s worth if everything ends like that. They have to have sex in the morning, to make the fee worthwhile, even if they are so hung-over that their own body is reluctant. I could never understand that. Anastasia told me once that it is like insisting on finishing last night’s dinner the next morning, just because you’ve already paid for it. I remember feeling so offended by her explanation that I yelled some very angry words at her. But she found the whole thing amusing. She was laughing the whole time, both while telling me her take on the overnighters and when she saw my outrage. I am still amazed at how well Anastasia has adjusted to her world.
I call her back in mid-afternoon.
“Lara, aziz jan, sorry I couldn’t talk earlier. You won’t believe what this guy was like. A small Japanese, maybe fifty, wants me to give him a bath, then a massage, then oral sex, then he wants to fuck. In that order. And then the same sequence in the morning. Everything timed, everything precise, everything…”
“Anastasia, stop,” I interrupt. I have waited half an hour too long before calling. She’s fully awake, maybe on her third cup of coffee. “Let’s skip all that. We need to talk about Yuri. I have some information.”
“Oh thank God! Finally! I am suffering in his hands. I never thought I’d be beaten again by these bastards after I managed to calm Viktor down, and here I am back to square one with Yuri. When can we talk? Can you come to Moscow?”
Sometimes it feels like Anastasia still thinks of me as a fellow prostitute. She wouldn’t have talked to me about the Japanese client otherwise. Nor would she think that I could just hop over to Moscow. I think perhaps I should test Edik’s theory of killing the past on Anastasia first. That would be simpler than trying it on Ahmed. So I bundle up all my past dealings with Anastasia and put them away somewhere in the back of my mind, focusing on where I am now, the past rendered inactive and irrelevant.
“I cannot come to Moscow,” I say. “I can talk to you on the phone for some of this, but you may have to come here for the rest.”
“Lara, aziz jan, if I leave again, Nicolai will kill me; if I don’t give something to Yuri soon, Yuri will kill me. Please. How else can we do this?”
“You’ll have to have Yuri and Nicolai sort this out. I cannot come to Moscow. Now listen, call Yuri and tell him that there is a very powerful man in Armenia who is after Ayvazian’s business. He has already taken over some operations, and a few of Ayvazian’s old henchmen now work for him. He will believe this because he knows it is true. This is important, are you listening?” I want to make sure her mind has not drifted somewhere else.
“Yes, I’m listening. That is important.”
“Good. Make sure you tell him that Ayvazian’s men in Aparan are now working for some other boss. That will give the rest of your story more credibility. Tell him that you asked me to help you find out more about this new boss. Say I promised to help. Then tell me what he says.”
“Lara, we cannot even talk this much over the phone. What if they’re listening? We have to figure out some other way to send messages.”
“Fine, we’ll do that. But now tell him that much and let me know what he says.”
Half an hour later Anastasia calls.
“He’s in Dubai,” she says all excited. “So I don’t think he was listening to us. He’s returning in two days. First to Yerevan, then he’ll come to Moscow, he said. So if there is more, you have two days to tell me, aziz jan.”
Have I managed to really change anything in my relationship with Anastasia by putting the past away? I’m not sure. I would probably have told her the same things, regardless. Maybe the difference is just in my head, and not in her head. But that wouldn’t be enough. In order to declare this experiment a success, Anastasia has to stop thinking of me as a prostitute, even as a former prostitute. She should look at me as one of her non-prostitute friends, if she has any, and even if she doesn’t have any. Maybe if she stops telling me stories of her clients… I would take that as a step in the right direction.
So, Yuri found his way to Dubai. It was bound to happen, given that he’s on a hunt for Ayvazian’s assets. I wonder if he’ll run into Nicolai there also, or that one is strictly a Moscow takeover artist. Either way, Madame Ano would have had the pleasure of meeting Yuri. I catch myself wondering what has happened to Ano and the other girls, and I get mad at myself. How can I expect others to forget my past, if I still think and wonder about it? I have to stick strictly to my new persona, in order for me to project it, and only it, to the rest of the world. At least I think that’s what Edik was trying to tell me in Vardahovit. This is not about denial, he said. Nor about memory. Acknowledge the past, confront the past, kill the past! Then move on, free of the past.
Alisia calls when I’m in class. We have agreed that she won’t call during class unless it is an emergency. Class ends in fifteen minutes, and my first instinct is to wait. But then I panic. What kind of emergency could they be having in Saralandj?
“Lara, they arrested Avo,” she screams. I am right outside the door of the classroom, and I walk fast towards the exit of the building so students in the hallway do not hear my side of the conversation.
“What happened?”
“He slaughtered one of his pigs, filled two large buckets with all the entrails and the blood, drove to LeFreak’s house outside Yerevan and splattered it all over the fence and the front gate.” She is hysterical. “The security guards almost killed him,” she screams between sobs. “They shot at him, to scare him away. Then they beat him up real bad and called the police. He’s in jail, Lara! What are we going to do?”
“Alisia, calm down, how did he drive to Yerevan?”
“He borrowed Ruben’s truck. He does not even have a driver’s license. Just to run a few errands between Saralandj and Aparan, he told Ruben. The police called Ruben about the incident. That’s how we know.”
“Does Gagik know?” I ask.
“I don’t know…” and Alisia starts wailing again. “Lara, they say he was very drunk. He was screaming ‘you want to be the king of pigs, Mr. LeFreak? You already are the biggest pig of all! Here! Take this then, the blood of your relatives!’ That’s what they said he was screaming while pouring the blood on the fence.”
“Alisia, there’s nothing we can do right now.” I desperately want to calm her down. “I’ll call Gagik and see what he says. They’ll probably keep him a day or two then release him. He hasn’t hurt anyone, hasn’t committed murder or something serious. So we’ll see. I know it’s scary, but it’s probably less serious than it appears to be.”
“Lara, he slaughtered the mother pig in the pen, while the piglets were suckling!” Alisia’s wail is deafening. “He dragged the body out, crushing a few of the piglets under her. How can our Avo be so cruel? How can he get that angry, that drunk?”
Details make you focus better. Alisia’s outburst is so powerful that my knees begin to shake and I sit on the steps. She is still ranting, and the phone is pressed to my ear, but my mind is blank. I want to turn off all signals, sounds, visions, and to just dissolve, merge with the earth. Did I make Avo this angry? He learned to kill because of me; did he learn anger because of me too? Does one learn how to be angry?
“Lara, are you there? Are you listening?” Alisia seems to be making herself even more hysterical as she tells the story.
“I don’t know, I never asked. I’m so sorry…I know I’m not helping at all. I’m so sorry… I’ll pull myself together, I promise.”
“Good. That’s the best thing you’ve said so far. None of us can help if we’re hysterical. Don’t worry, I’ll call Ruben myself. You take care of things at home until we sort this out.”
Two hours later Gagik and I are at a jail outside Yerevan. It is past visiting hours, and the guard is uncooperative. Gagik tries to reason with him, saying that I am the prisoner’s sister, that no one from the family has visited him yet, that at least I should be allowed to talk to him, even for a few minutes. The guard stares at me for a minute, but remains firm. He stands at the gate like a rock, and addresses us so rudely that my blood starts to boil. Could anger be genetic? Then Gagik reaches into his pocket, and approaches him. He slips some banknotes into his hand.
“I’ll see what I can do,” mumbles the guard. “Maybe five minutes.”
Gagik notices my hands shake.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says, clearly mistaking my anger for fear.
“I’m not afraid,” I say. “I want to do to him what Avo did to that poor pig.”
Gagik looks at me for a moment, unsure how to react. Then he laughs.
“Anger is a powerful tool,” he says. “We used it as ammunition during the war. It is as important as guns and bullets. But, like guns and bullets, one needs to aim it right. The target of your anger should not be this poor guard, Lara. He really does not know any better. Besides, technically, he’s right, we’re here past visiting hours.”
Gagik’s words bring me back to earth so fast that I feel momentarily disoriented. And they call this guy ‘Crazy?’ I’d love to see him when he is really crazy, when he is releasing his anger at a deserving enemy.
The Doves of Ohanavank Page 16