“Where did you tell him they were?”
Maryam didn’t try to hide her exasperation, but looked at Darius as though he were impossibly thick. “You know I don’t know.”
“He accepted that?”
“He was like you. He thought if he never let me out of his sight, eventually he’d have them. Them and me.”
“You went along with him?”
“I’d seen what had happened to Leila. Better to let him drive me crazy asking the same question over and over than try convincing Baraheni of anything. Rahgozar was a good man, who had the best interests of two countries at heart. Whenever I think about what happened to him, I want to cry.”
Reaching for the bottle again he brushed her arm, and she smiled and covered his hand in hers, a gesture that left him unmoved. In her aversion to him he’d been cast as another nuisance she was willing to put up with in order to preserve her life. He leaned across the table and kissed her.
She didn’t pull away, didn’t encourage him either. The sensation was like ice against his mouth—a thin layer capping a dormant hot spring. A thin fantasy, as well. He laughed out loud, and when Maryam asked, “What’s funny?” he shook his head and drank more, then cupped her chin in his palm and kissed her again, watching the top of her breasts inside Mrs. Mehta’s frumpy chemise.
He carried the bottle into the living room, and nestled against bolster pillows covered in red damask. Maryam came in after him, and though he concentrated on the vodka soon he had her in his arms. His hand on her breast made her heart accelerate. But she remained unresponsive when he kissed her, and he wrote off her reaction as one of alarm. On the chance that he was wrong, because he wanted to be, he nudged her onto her back. Her arm came up and stiffened against his chest.
“You heard just a small part of my story,” she said. “I was a Bride of Blood in more than name only.”
“I heard enough.”
“No—there were rules for everything. If you broke even one of them, it might mean your life. For the girls of the Sayyidah Zaynab Brigade there was one rule that couldn’t be bent, although our instructors challenged us to do so every day.”
“Oh … ?” he said, knowing what she would tell him, already looking for his glass.
“We had to remain virgins, pure in heart and in body.”
“You weren’t so malleable that you agreed to everything they demanded of you?
“I thought I was being loyal.”
“Loyal to who? Of what use could the Party of God make of your virginity?”
“Those are the same arguments our instructors raised,” she said, “after class was over.”
She remained quiet for so long that he felt obligated to change the subject. “It’s getting late …”
“Loyal to myself,” she said then.
Women worldlier than she had given him the same rationale. From childhood, every Iranian girl had it impressed upon her that her virginity was her most precious possession. Even in cosmopolitan Teheran a young woman who was sexually experienced would have a difficult time finding a good husband. Any man who would marry a nonvirgin was deemed to be more seriously flawed than the girl he desired.
“You’re falling asleep,” he heard her say.
“You’ve hypnotized me.”
He reached for her again, but embraced air as she slipped through his arms. The bottle that he snatched as a consolation prize was empty. She was scolding him, telling him he drank too much and that he needed rest if he was to regain his strength. In all her clothes, like a girl from the provinces, she wallowed in the pillows making a place to sleep for one. Darius tucked the empty under his arm and stumbled into the bedroom.
The single mattress was narrow and rutted; Mehta must have had his share of nights like this. The sheets felt gritty, and hadn’t been changed since the body was taken away. He had no qualms about sleeping in his dead friend’s bed. Perhaps Mehta’s ghost would come down from Zoroastrian heaven where seven archangels dwelled with Ahura Mazda, and he would have companionship till morning when he would feel well enough to pursue Maryam again. Whole new areas of investigation were opening up to him now that he was no longer a detective.
He hung Mehta’s suit behind the door and slipped between the sandy sheets. His eyes already were shut. The kiss that he felt on his forehead must have been a product of his imagination, for he was out by then, sleeping the deep, dreamless sleep of the dead.
Her throat was on fire. She tore open the windows and sucked cool air into her lungs, held it until she could swallow without pain. She crawled back into her nest to wait for her body to wake up, but still felt sluggish forty-five minutes later when she went into the bedroom. Darius had kicked off the covers and lay with his weight supported by both shoulders and one hip, a contortionist’s trick that must have provided some relief for his wounded back. Breathing through his mouth, he made strangling sounds that she didn’t like to hear. She opened the bedroom windows all the way. The breeze rustled the sheets, but Darius didn’t stir. She tossed the covers over his twisted body, and walked out.
A hot morning shower was mad luxury after the weeks in Evin. She cooked some eggs and put up water for tea, and after she had eaten she made a second breakfast for Darius. His body had rearranged itself into a more intricate knot. When she raised the shades to allow the sunlight to spread over his face, she noticed an oozing rash under his beard. The light moving into his eyes didn’t budge him. It was unsettling for her to see someone sleep so soundly, and she pushed at his ribs until his body rocked on one hip. “Come on,” she said, “it’s time you were up.”
She pushed harder. His muscles contracted, and he flung himself onto his side.
“Are you all right?”
He moved his arms in front of his face, but they were heavy, and he dropped them and tried to get out of bed. The rash covered the back of his hands and ran up his other cheek in broad streaks that continued under the hairline. Thick clots of blood were stuck to his lower lip. When he opened his mouth to tell her something, he vomited up more of them, and Maryam thought she was going to be sick, too.
“Burning up,” he mumbled. “No strength. Can’t breathe—”
“What is it?”
“Don’t know.”
“Is there a doctor we can trust?”
“No. You—”
“I wouldn’t know the first thing to do.”
He fell back against the pillow. She lifted his head to her ear, held her breath as he tried to speak.
“Call the morgue.”
Fifteen minutes went by from the time she reached the coroner’s office until Baghai came on the line.
“I’m calling on behalf of Darius Bakhtiar,” she said.
There was another extended silence during which she thought Baghai would hang up on her. Then she heard him clear his throat, and in an old man’s reedy voice he asked, “Who is this?”
“A friend of his. He needs your help.”
“Lieutenant Colonel Bakhtiar has been taken to Evin Prison. Who am I talking to?”
“He doesn’t believe me,” she said to Darius, and put the receiver to his mouth.
“Baghai…”
“It’s you? When did you get out?”
“Yesterday. I—”
“That’s wonderful news. I scarcely dared hope I’d ever hear—wonderful. Now I have some news for you.”
Darius tried to interrupt, but couldn’t get in a word. He shook his head, and Maryam took back the phone.
“He’s very sick,” she said. “He isn’t able to speak.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s throwing up blood, and can’t catch his breath. His muscles are weak. He was tortured a long time in prison. He may have suffered internal injuries.”
“It’s a possibility.”
Darius pawed at the phone until Maryam put him on again.
“I’ve been poisoned.”
“Why do you say that?” Baghai asked.
“My s
kin … like the Darwish girl’s.”
“Mycotoxin poisoning? How would you have been exposed?”
“… No idea.”
“You didn’t ingest any?”
“Don’t see how I could have.”
“You need fluids in copious amounts to flush out your kidneys before they are permanently damaged. Drink at least three dozen glasses of water each of the next several days. Also you must remove all of the poison in contact with your body and hair. Is there a bathtub where you are?”
Darius nodded, and Maryam said yes into the phone for him.
“Take a shower right away. Put on clean clothes, and apply mineral oil to the rashes. Where are you?”
“… Better not say.”
“Well, I suppose you have your reasons,” Baghai said. “What I was going to tell you is that the lab work just came back on Mehta, and it was determined conclusively that he died of mycotoxin poisoning. He took it with heroin, same as Leila Darwish. His body was one big running sore. But that doesn’t explain how you got sick.”
“Caught it from him.”
“Don’t be absurd. If you can come to my office, or I can see you there …”
“The Komiteh is looking for me.”
“I understand. Then it is essential that you follow my instructions.”
Darius touched Maryam’s hand, and she put back the receiver.
“What did he tell you?” she asked. “Why were you talking about poison?”
“The mycotoxins … they’ve gotten into my system.”
“How?”
He pushed her away from the bed. “Bring me water. Lots of it.”
When she returned from the kitchen with a glass in each hand he had taken off his underwear and was struggling to get out of bed. Naked, he appeared mad to her; she considered that his brain had been affected. Reaching for a glass, he toppled against her, and she held him on his feet while he drank. When he finished she tried to make him sit, but his legs were churning and she couldn’t move him.
“Get back into bed. Where do you think you’re going?”
“Shower,” he said. “I need to wash it off my body.”
She pulled his arm around her shoulder, and steered him out of the room. For a lightly muscled man he seemed inordinately heavy, a highly efficient machine that had run out of gas. By the time they were in the bathroom she had as little strength left as Darius, who clutched at the shower curtain rod while she lifted his feet over the side of the tub. She saw him totter on the slippery bottom, and then stepped in after him and propped him up under the hot spray.
He was staring at her with his first smile since he had come out of prison, maybe his first ever, she thought—if a smile was what it was, and not just the sloppy grin she attributed to his loss of muscular control. She followed his gaze to the sodden rag of her dress, which was transparent over her breasts, and noticed that he had become aroused; his meager strength concentrated in that one area of his body separate and apart from him and yet at his heart. She turned him around and soaped his back. His skin came away in ragged strips that spiraled down the drain.
She worked thin lather into his scalp, rubbed it thick with her fingertips. His body was sliding down against hers. She wrapped her arms around his chest and squeezed until he had his legs under him again, and all the while he never stopped grinning. Then she sat him on the side of the tub and pulled a towel from the rack.
“A clean one,” he demanded. “And a fresh change of clothes.”
She came back with Turkish bath towels slung over both shoulders, covering the wet dress almost to her waist. He took one to dry his body, another for his hair, and tossed the remainder on the wet tiles.
“We have to leave now,” he said. “Why?”
“The house is full of mycotoxins.”
“How can that be?”
“You tell me.”
“Me? I’ve never been here before.”
“I didn’t absorb the poison with drugs like Leila and Mehta, I was exposed when it got on my skin. Some was in the heroin that fell into Mehta’s bed the last time he injected himself. You still haven’t told me how the drugs were used to smuggle the mycotoxins into Iran.”
Maryam gave him clean underwear, and helped him balance while he put it on. “Inside each bag of heroin was a smaller bag containing the mycotoxins in their raw state. The Revolutionary Guards at the border were under orders to overlook any heroin coming into the country, and to allow us to continue unmolested to Teheran. They knew nothing about mycotoxins. No one did.”
“Except for you.”
“Not until I was informed by Rahgozar.”
“Had you let me know that much—”
“At Manzarieh,” she said, “all students are instructed in the art of khod’eh, the telling of half truths to guard the faith. If I was less than forthcoming, it was to save Iran.”
“How did you serve the nation by losing her chemical weapons?”
“I saved it from itself.”
“That’s garbage. Had you told me, Mehta might still be alive.”
“I never suspected the mycotoxins had become mixed with the heroin. All I knew was that they were transported in the same packages that disappeared after they were stolen by Sousan. Can you explain how they came to be here?”
Darius had found baby oil in the medicine chest, and was rubbing it into his raw skin. His breath caught every time he touched a rash. Maryam poured some into her hands, and patted it on gently.
“Can you?” she asked.
“I’m beginning to think so.”
“What? Well, then, after you’re better, return the mycotoxins to the Komiteh. No doubt they’ll forgive everything, and honor you as a national hero.”
“They may let me live,” Darius said. “That would be plenty.”
He started into the bedroom, and she followed after him ready to catch him if he stumbled. There were other clean shirts in the closet, more old lady dresses for her to choose from. Mehta’s second-best suit had never been worn, and did not fit Darius badly after Maryam basted the cuffs.
“Where can we go with little money?” she asked, “when you’re so weak you can’t walk?”
“Call a telephone cab. Tell them we want the Sepahsalar Mosque on Baharestan Square.”
“It’s late to start praying.”
“Not to pray,” Darius said. “To appease.”
Eight stout minarets, yellow and pale blue, reached to the heavens from the wall of the Sepahsalar Mosque. Darius stood beside the djoub on Modaress Avenue looking at the long facade of stones from a Mashad mosque destroyed in an earthquake and rebuilt on the campus of the old Army Commanders’ School, which was now the Muslim Theological Seminary. A crew of Komitehmen charged with eliminating counterrevolutionary graffiti was attacking the wall with mops and chemical solvent where vandals had spray-painted GOD BLESS AMERICA in English and Farsi. The shaded courtyard was crowded with knots of men carrying rolled prayer rugs under their arm. Darius brought Maryam across to the women’s side, to the corner informally reserved for worshipers seeking to contract a temporary marriage. Here none of the women wore facial veils. Each stood in the teeth of a steady breeze that blew her chador back on her head and held the black cloth tight against her body. Darius scanned the forced smiles, looking away when any lingered too long on him. He moved toward the wall where a woman with a luxuriant figure had been following him with her eyes since he came in off the street.
“Well, now I have lived to see everything,” she said. “What do you want at a mosque? Is some terrible crime being committed here? Or have you given up police work to become an anthropologist?”
“Perhaps both.”
In her sardonic smile there was no room for his moral superiority. A short staring contest between them ended with Darius the loser. He bowed his head, allowing her to kiss him, and some of the acid went out of her expression. A resemblance to Darius became obvious the longer Maryam looked at her; but she could not guess what their
relationship was, nor the woman’s age, which seemed to vary between the late thirties and early sixties, depending upon which aspect of her appearance was the gauge. The smooth complexion of her handsome face was belied by slack skin under tired eyes. Delicate hands unaccustomed to hard work or household chores were heavily veined on the backs, and spotted brown. The frilly bodice of a party frock was worn to be noticed underneath her stylish chador. Although she lacked the high sculpted cheekbones that were Darius’s best feature, the wide-set intelligent eyes and silky black hair, the brooding gaze, were his.
“What are we doing here?” Maryam asked him.
“Didn’t you tell her who you’ve come to see?” the woman asked. “Are you too ashamed to introduce me?”
“… I would like you to meet Shahin Khanum,” he said to Maryam.
“Madame Shahin?” The smile softened into a pleased exaggeration of itself. “Since when have you become so formal?”
“Shahin Khanum,” he said, “is my mother.”
“This is Farib?”
“I’m divorced. Maryam is a friend.”
“You don’t look well,” Shahin Khanum said. “Your friend is not taking good care of you. Too many women these days don’t know how to look after a man.”
“I’ve been sick.”
“Marriage has made you unwell. It is a stultifying institution when it goes on for so long that inertia takes the place of love. I’m happy to learn you’re single again—and that you have such a lovely friend.”
“How have you been?” Darius asked.
“There is little for me to complain about. For three years on and off I was married to a mullah, a learned marja from a madreseh in Tabriz. We lived together in a nice house off Jaleh Square for a year while he had a teaching appointment in Teheran. After that he would have me for his seegah in the summer, when he would return for a month on his vacation, and pay me a generous brideprice every time.
“Now things are not so good. I have been seeing several gentlemen when their wives are having their menstrual period and are impure to them. The length of each contract is just one week, and afterward, as you know, I cannot marry again for three months. It is hard like that. Sometimes I don’t wait the whole ninety days. But…” Shahin Khanum tucked her loose hair primly under her chador as she turned to Maryam. “But what can be more satisfying than to do God’s will as the Qur’an commends us? I wish I could seegah for every man in Iran.
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