The guard returns, a huge, bear-like creature swinging right and left as he walks, huffing as if he’s out of breath.
“Come!” he orders. We follow him, and a whiff of his body odor nauseates me. Some of my clients smelled so bad that I had to hold my breath. I literally held my nose while they were having sex with me. This unkempt bear of a man smells like them.
“Wait here!” he says and walks out.
A few minutes later two guards bring Avo in. They release him. He is limping. As I run to him, I see him wavering, and Gagik is quick to join me as we hold him up.
“Did you bring me cigarettes?” he asks. That’s when I notice his lips shake like twigs in a storm. Inside his left eye, a pool of blood has filled the space where the white used to be. There is a huge bruise on his right cheek.
I cannot lose Avo like this. This has to end. My problems seem so petty right now. If I’m the one who has been to hell and back, why is it Avo who’s in this condition right now? Why is he still in a hell that he cannot escape? I do not need to overanalyze this, but I’m responsible for a large part of it. It does not matter what part and where and how. What happened to me has caused this to happen to Avo. It was the strength of my family that held me together while girls in my situation were becoming unreachable. I shall now try to bring Avo back home, as I came back. Avo has the same fight in him that I had in me. I am now convinced of that. In many ways, he has been forced out of his home, without even leaving Saralandj, as much as I was.
“We have to get him cigarettes,” I tell Gagik.
“They’ll never let us back in,” he says, worried. Then he approaches the two guards waiting by the door.
“Aper jan,” he says, ‘brother’, “would you sell me a pack of cigarettes?” He is holding a five thousand dram note, which is probably ten times the price of a pack. The guards look at each other and shrug.
“Sure,” says one of them, grabbing the note from Gagik’s hand. He hands him a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Gagik checks it, and I can tell from his reaction that the pack is not full. He stares at the guard with such intensity that I see the guard take a step back.
“And the lighter,” he says, holding his gaze. The guard hands him his disposable bic lighter.
“Thank you,” says Gagik and walks backwards toward us, still focused on the guard. He puts a cigarette in Avo’s mouth and lights it. He then hands him the pack and the lighter. Avo shuts his eyes and takes a long drag. As he puffs out the smoke, he looks at me for the first time.
“I’m sorry, Kurig jan,” he says. “For everything, and for smoking indoors.”
Chapter Twenty
“Did you miss me?” asks Yuri as he enters Carla’s study. He looks tired but in a good mood, and he has a large manila envelope in his hand.
“That depends,” says Carla, but smiles faintly. She is lying on the maroon velvet sofa reading a magazine. “You sure took your time in Dubai.”
“It was worth it.” Yuri approaches the sofa.
Carla sits up, and accepts a kiss from him with another faint smile. “Good to have you back,” she says, keeping her voice businesslike.
“I have news. Some good, some bad, and some as of yet unclear. Do you want them in any order?”
“Just talk.”
Yuri opens the envelope and drops a bunch of papers on the coffee table. The top document is bilingual, with two columns, Arabic on the right and English on the left.
“That’s the purchase agreement of a villa in Dubai. Paid in full in cash. 2.8 million euros, four years ago. The deed of trust is in there too. In the name of Viktor Ayvazian. The agent says prices have not risen much in the last four years, but he thinks he can sell it for 3 million euros today.”
“So for once my mother knew what she was talking about.” Carla eyes the papers. She does not want Yuri to see she’s excited about the three million euros.
“The problem is, Dubai has strict inheritance laws. This cannot be yours yet, even if Viktor bought it for your father and with his money.”
“Then whose is it?”
“His wife’s. Even though Viktor’s wife has long returned home, legally they are still married. She gets everything.”
Carla slowly moves her eyes from the papers to Yuri, and stares at him for a long moment, waiting for a more hopeful interpretation of these unwelcome facts.
“Of course, no one in Dubai has any knowledge of Viktor’s marital status,” says Yuri. “I told them he wasn’t married. I was told to bring back four documents. First, his death certificate; second, an official paper testifying that he was a bachelor, had no children and was not survived by his parents; third, a paper showing that you, or you and your mother, are the legal heirs; and fourth, a power of attorney from the legal heirs appointing me to handle the inheritance in Dubai on their behalf. The first and last are easy. The second and third are problematic. But if we secure these papers, I can go back tomorrow and transfer everything to your name.”
“Who told you to bring these documents?”
“The real estate agent.”
“Is he a lawyer?” Carla likes to put Yuri on the spot, to insinuate that he has been less than thorough.
“Uh, I don’t know if he’s a lawyer.” Yuri is annoyed and impatient. “I wasn’t about to start talking to lawyers out there. He has handled enough cases like this. I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about.”
“Where was Viktor married?” asks Carla, ignoring Viktor’s last comment.
“Good question,” says Yuri, but he still sounds annoyed. “I have no idea. Has anyone met his wife?”
“I haven’t. I’ll ask my mother. She must have met her. I know she went back to Leningrad. I know nothing else about her. If they were married in Leningrad, it will make matters easier.”
“Do you want me to ask around for a good lawyer to prepare the documents?”
“No, leave this with me,” says Carla, putting the papers back in the envelope and walking over to her desk. “I want to read these more carefully. Tell me what else you found.”
She is wearing a pair of grey pants and a white blouse. Yuri has learned that, generally, her clothes reflect her sexual mood. A skirt is the most suggestive that she’s in the mood. A dress is a close second. Pants usually mean that she is not receptive. But these are only general observations he has made, not strict rules. There have been exceptions that have surprised him.
She comes back to the sofa and puts her feet up. Yuri tells her about his meeting with Ano and the state of affairs in Dubai. He also gives an account of the various nightspots that he visited, and his impressions of the market in Dubai, and some comparisons with Moscow. He tells her what he found out about Ali the Enforcer and his new priorities.
Carla interrupts him a few times with specific questions that he cannot answer. “How many girls did we have,” she asks, “and how many of those have defected?” Viktor does not know. “Did you find out about the Galian girl? How did she leave Dubai?”
“Yes,” says Viktor, happy that he did not miss this one. “She was sold to some local VIP. A lot of money. Ano says one hundred thousand dollars for one year. But when she escaped, Viktor had to refund three quarters of it.”
“How did she leave Dubai?” asks Carla again, not impressed with his answer.
“Ano does not know. No one knows.”
“I’m sure someone knows,” says Carla dryly. “It is you who doesn’t know.”
But Yuri is tired of talking. He gets up and pours himself a drink from the ornately carved cabinet full of heavy crystal. A generous shot of Nayiri twenty-year old cognac in hand, he returns to the sofa, and offers her a sip. When she accepts, Yuri puts his arm around her.
“So now will you tell me how much you missed me?”
“Not today, Yuri. If you had arrived two days ago, I would have given you a different welcome. But not today.” The detail in explanation, which is unusual for Carla, is meant to convey to Yuri the message that this is not a convenient time of t
he month, and that she is not trying to show her disappointment in his results.
Yuri still looks tired, sleep-deprived and irritable. Anastasia hates that mood in any man, and more so in one who won’t think twice about hitting her. He’s just arrived at her apartment, again without calling in advance. Clothes are thrown on the chairs and on the floor in the living room, and dirty dishes are piled up in the sink of her small kitchen.
“Call her now,” he tells her. She knows he means Lara. She is happy that she has agreed with Lara on a code word to let her know that someone is listening to their conversation.
“Lara, aziz jan, it’s me, Anastasia,” she says, stressing her name. Giving her name is not her normal style of starting a conversation and is the cue to Lara that everything she says is overheard.
“What’s the matter?” asks Lara, “You sound like you have a cold. Are you okay?” That is her code phrase to let Anastasia know that she got the message.
“I’m fine now. Was a little under the weather earlier. Have you found out anything new since we last talked?”
“There seems to be total chaos here,” says Lara. “Whatever that bastard Ayvazian had in Aparan and Ashtarak is being grabbed by others.”
“Any idea by who?”
“No one knows for sure, but most people think it is the animal called LeFreak. People say he has taken over Ayvazian’s operations in Lori too. He has been hiring new thugs there. I don’t understand why the government protects these criminals.”
“Lara, how sure are you LeFreak is behind all this?” Anastasia is repeating Yuri’s silent instructions through his lips and hand movements.
“No one can be one hundred percent sure of anything.” Lara sounds frustrated. “These people do not appear anywhere under their own name. They have others do their dirty work for them. Ayvazian was the same way. Is there any proof anywhere that he was selling people into slavery? Some say Ayvazian’s family is still in control, some say LeFreak is taking over everything, some say that there are other oligarchs pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Who knows? But I wouldn’t put it past LeFreak to be behind most of it.”
Yuri is now scribbling notes for Anastasia.
“What else do you have on LeFreak?” she asks.
“When I was in Istanbul,” says Lara carefully, starting the second part of her prepared message, “I overheard a few things. There is this man there, his name is Abo Arslan. The Ayvazians knew him. They were competitors, and the Ayvazians would not let him into the Dubai market. Abo was talking with LeFreak about starting up in Dubai, and beating Ayvazian at his own game. Abo hated Ayvazian. I mean, Anastasia, really hated him. Then I heard him tell his assistant, some Turkish guy, that he’d make a deal with the devil if he had to in order to beat Ayvazian. They were talking Turkish in a corner and I was sitting in a chair at the far end of the room, so they thought I could not hear, and besides, they knew I did not speak Turkish. But Turkish is close to Azeri, and I know a little Azeri, so I heard and understood enough. And then Abo tells his assistant, ‘Timur,’ he says, ‘I think I just found the devil with whom I’ll make a deal to kill Ayvazian.’ Now, again, I cannot be one-hundred percent sure, but I am almost sure that the devil he was referring to is LeFreak.”
“That’s incredible,” says Anastasia, this time without any prompt from Yuri. “So this goes all the way to Istanbul?”
“Frankly, I did not think much of Abo’s comments then, but when I heard LeFreak has taken over Aparan and Lori, it all came back to me. He must have been planning something for a long time. Maybe he was the one behind Viktor’s and Sergei’s murders. Not that I am shedding any tears for those two bastards, Anastasia. They probably deserved whatever happened to them. But this LeFreak is not any better, that’s all.”
“Be careful, aziz jan. You really don’t want to be mixed up with people like that. Stay away, keep your head down.”
“All I want to do now is attend classes at the University.” They have to have some girl talk, to make the whole conversation more credible. “I am done with that life. If you’re happy staying in it, I’m happy for you, my old friend. I will never judge you. But I cannot return to that.”
“Good for you, Lara. I knew this was not for you from the beginning. Not everyone can take to this. But I still say you would have been great. You could have built an empire!” laughs Anastasia, recovering her joviality.
“You can keep it, sister,” Lara laughs back. “You can keep all of it! There is no power on earth that can force me to go back to that world. Not LeFreak, and not Ayvazian if he were to return from his grave.” That too is for Yuri’s benefit. Lara wants them to know that she’d be more trouble than it’s worth, no matter how lucrative she could have been had she cooperated. “Now I have to go,” she says. “We’ll talk again soon.”
Yuri signals Anastasia to keep the conversation going, but Lara hangs up. Not a big loss; he’s heard enough. He’ll have a lot to plan with Carla when he returns to Yerevan.
Chapter Twenty-One
Edik often talks about an Irish friend of his who believes that the Irish and the Armenians are similar in many ways—general outlook on life, culture, a sad history captured in sad songs, etc. Edik says his friend is particularly curious about Armenian popular sayings and proverbs, because he claims they could easily have been Irish.
One such proverb is: ‘It is better to go into captivity with the whole village than to a wedding alone.’ I told Edik that if he asks me about this saying first thing in the morning, I probably would disagree with it. I still love and need my solitude in the mornings, no matter how alien that may be in these parts. But when I look at all that we have to fight against these days, it makes infinite sense.
It is the third day that Avo is in jail. I have visited him every day, taking four packs of cigarettes each time, and have called home regularly to put everyone’s mind at ease. His eye and bruises do not look much better, but he seems stronger, a little more steady, and is no longer limping. We’ve had more time to talk alone in the past three days than in the past seven months. At least that has been one good thing to come from this disaster. I have begun to realize that Avo is deeper and more complex than he appears. For one thing, he takes his role as the ‘head of the family’ seriously. He sees me as the most exposed member of the family, which explains why a large part of his protective instincts are directed at me. Combine that with the total helplessness that he feels with everything having to do with me, and you get the frustration, which is the cauldron where his anger brews. I’ve learned that feeling helpless in general—helpless to prevent Papa’s murder, Mama’s death, my abduction, helpless against LeFreak—is what feeds the rage in Avo. Probably the only time that he felt somewhat in control was in building the pig farm, and that was taken away from him in the end.
I jokingly remind him that I’m older. “Head of the family or not,” I say laughing, “you’re still a kid. So stop being so serious about everything.”
Avo brings up Hermine once or twice during these talks. It is always in the context of talking about Ruben and Martha, but it is obvious that he likes to mention her.
“So how much do you like Hermine?” I ask teasingly, and he blushes. It feels good to make a man blush for a change.
“She’s nice,” he says and looks away, and I drop the subject.
My main task is to convince Avo to accept LeFreak’s condition for dropping the charges: Avo has to paint the entire outer surface of the fence surrounding his house. It is two-hundred-and-twenty meters long, one-and-a-half meters high. Over the wall, there is another meter of cast iron railing, which, fortunately, does not have to be painted. Gagik says that a laborer would charge around five hundred dollars to do the job, so it is not the money that LeFreak is after. “He just wants to humiliate Avo,” says Gagik. “To teach him a lesson. Have him think, at least for the three days that it will take Avo to complete the task, that he can’t mess with him again.”
Had LeFreak been a decent,
law-abiding man, says Gagik, he would have approved of his way of handling Avo. Teach the young man a lesson, and set him free, hoping that he gets back on track. Brilliant. Of course had he been that man, Avo would have had no reason to commit the mistake that he made. And this is one of the strengths of these criminal oligarchs. They know how to make their actions appear fair and compassionate, even as they destroy the livelihood of hundreds of families.
Gagik helps me convince Avo to accept the terms. We secure a provision that Avo can have others helping him, as long as he is there the whole time while the painting is being done. That is important, because what would have taken three days for one man to do, takes just half a day for six men working together. Avo, Gagik, Ruben, Simon, Sago and Aram finish painting the fence in four hours. We all have to fight hard with Edik to keep him out of it. The participation of an expatriate would have raised LeFreak’s curiosity, with no added advantage. “What the hell do you know about painting walls anyway?” Gagik told him. “Just leave this one to us.”
Edik’s Irish friend is right to like our proverb.
Avo is thus a free man after four days in jail, but still he does not have much to come home to.
My life has become busy in the past week. Aside from the incident with Avo, Sona’s wedding preparations create new demands on everyone’s time, and Anna wants to spend more time with me as her new and only friend. At the same time, we are anxiously awaiting a reaction from Yuri, and I have not even mentioned Ahmed yet, who calls regularly and, when he finally arrives in Yerevan, will create the ultimate distraction for me in the middle of everything else that is going on.
Anna has borrowed Varujan’s Pagan Songs and reads religiously. But it is not easy to understand Varujan. Not only did he write in Western Armenian, but also his vocabulary is far more advanced and sophisticated than either of us can fathom. So Anna gives me a list of words every few days to look up in the dictionary at the University. I appreciate the opportunity to enrich my own vocabulary in the process, and now that we both understand him better, we realize how boundless his passion is.
The Doves of Ohanavank Page 17