Bride and Groom

by Alisa Ganieva

  “We raised our daughter, gave her everything she needed, and she sits right here in this room and declares that these idiots in niqabs are right, and her father, who has thirty medals on his chest—real, legitimate ones, by the way—is wrong!”

  “Don’t get worked up, sit down, let’s have some tea and pie.” Shakhov’s wife was the voice of calm.

  “Don’t interrupt!” sputtered Shakhov. “Just tell me, Sabrina, what is the point? Who is going to put an end to all this?”

  “Justice will triumph, I should hope,” answered Sabrina, with dignity.

  “No, Khalilbek will dot the ‘i’! He always used to tell me, “It all comes down to a point, comrade Shakhov, that single point where it all ends.”

  “Bullshit,” Sabrina muttered under her breath.

  “There you have it!” Shakhov pointed his finger triumphantly at his daughter. “Feast your eyes, Marat. Her father is talking sense, and she just sits there muttering to herself! And she has turned down every single suitor who comes her way!”

  “Oh, I’m sure a beautiful girl like her has no end of suitors,” interjected Marat’s mother.

  “She’ll soon be too old and they’ll stop coming. And then she can put on her niqab and go off into the forest to her friends, where she’ll find a husband in no time. Or two or three!” Shakhov was in a fury.

  “Astauperulla,” Marat’s mother said, alarmed.

  “What are you saying?” Shakhov’s wife flipped her short mane and went out to the kitchen to get the pie. Marat’s mother stood up, smoothed her skirt with her thick palms, and followed her.

  Marat got up as though to stretch his legs, and strolled along the wall, inspecting the framed award certificates.

  “Are they yours, from school?” he asked Sabrina.

  She didn’t answer.

  “You’re being spoken to,” Shakhov said to his daughter.

  “Can’t you tell they’re mine?” Sabrina hissed, without looking at anyone. “I’ve taken them down from the wall a hundred times, and Mama just hangs them up again. What is she after? Next thing you know, she’ll post my term papers up there for people to gawk at.”

  “Just look at her, Marat!” Shakhov turned beet red. “Can you believe what she’s saying? Yo, your mother is proud of you, that’s why she put them up on the walls. We got you into the top school, hired tutors, helped with university, and set you up with an internship. Could I even have dreamed of such a life? I worked from the age of twelve!”

  “You’ve used that on me enough, Papa!”

  “Before my father got his job in the theater, we lived in the middle of nowhere, in a village. In the morning, I worked on the collective farm, in the afternoon at school, and at night in the garden and my workshop. My uncle was in prison, times were hard, and my father wasn’t accepted into the Party.”

  “Enough already! I’ve heard it all a thousand times!”

  “Your mother spoiled you rotten!”

  “Why are you criticizing her again?” snapped Shakhov’s wife, bringing in the pie. Marat’s mother minced in after her, bearing a tray with teacups.

  “Here’s why,” Shakhov went on in a rage. “Your daughter isn’t serving tea to our guests. There she sits, talking back to her father. Khadizha, sit down. Let Sabrina serve the tea.”

  “Oh, it’s no trouble, goodness. I’ll do it!” clucked Marat’s mother. “Sabrinochka’s time will come for serving and table-setting. When she gets married she’ll be the one putting on feasts.”

  “Don’t make me laugh! Her husband will throw her out of the house the day after the wedding!”

  “What are you saying?” Shakhov’s wife finally lost her patience. “Shaming your own daughter in front of guests! Retirement has completely pickled your brain!”

  Marat was desperate to leave; he could hardly hold himself back.

  “What a delicious pie! What’s the filling—apricots and nuts? Did Sabrina make it?” Marat’s mother oohed and aahed over the desert, digging in.

  “I can’t cook,” Sabrina declared insolently. “Mama went and bought it at the bakery.”

  An awkward pause set in; everyone squeaked their chairs and clinked their teaspoons. The pie was indeed fresh and delicious, just as good as homemade.

  “My mother used to make pies,” Shakhov began, but there came the sound of the front door closing in the entryway, and Shakh’s voice was heard. Shakh was Shakhov’s nephew and Marat’s childhood friend from town.

  “Why do you leave your door open?” asked Shakh gaily, approaching the table and shaking the men’s hands. “No, no! I won’t eat anything, I’ll just sit and have some tea with you.”

  Shakhov’s wife scowled in Sabrina’s direction, and Sabrina went to get another glass.

  “So you and Shakh are colleagues?” Shakhov nodded to Marat.

  “Yes, we were in school together,” Marat confirmed.

  Rowdy Shakh, with his broad shoulders and rippling muscles, had always seemed too boisterous for Marat. When he was a student, he’d been a mover and shaker who had managed to study, earn money on the side, spend his evenings at discotheques, go to youth festivals, ruin girls’ reputations, win amateur boxing matches, and drag everyone around him into his endless escapades. He was like a wind-up toy, never slowing down.

  “What’s the latest news about Khalilbek?” Shakhov turned the conversation back on track.

  “Everyone’s asking about it,” Shakh took up the theme. “But no one can understand a thing. Not even the investigators.”

  “Who’s doing the investigation, the locals?”

  “No, people from Rostov. Anyway, at this point Khalilbek has only been officially charged with one crime: the murder of the investigator. And even that’s pretty flimsy.”

  “I knew it,” Shakhov said, with relief. “They can’t take him with their bare hands!”

  “The problem is, there’s a long chain of intermediaries. Khalilbek supposedly handed the investigator job over to this guy he knew, Akula the Shark, and Akula gave it to someone else, who then passed it on, and this went on for eight rounds. And the eighth guy roped in his cousin once removed. They caught and interrogated the cousin, but now they have to comb through all the intermediaries and work back up the chain. By the time they get back to Khalilbek, the whole case will probably have collapsed.”

  “Wow, just imagine …”

  Sabrina brought in the cup with trembling hands. She set it down in front of Shakh, proudly raised her elegant chin and announced:

  “Pleasure to see you all. Unfortunately, I have to study. Goodbye.”

  “What do you mean, ‘goodbye?’ When the guests leave, that’s when you say your ‘goodbye!’” snapped Shakhov.

  “Of course, Sabrinochka, you go study, dear. Let me give you a kiss.”

  Marat’s mother kissed Sabrina, who turned and sailed forth.

  Shakh cast a sly glance at Marat.

  “You’ll have to excuse her. She has a very tough schedule. She is up late practically every night with cardiology,” Shakhov’s wife said.

  “So she’s in cardiology, just like you!” Marat’s mother exclaimed.

  “Yes, my wife is a renowned cardiologist. She’s even treated Khalilbek—though she missed her own husband’s heart attack,” seethed Shakhov.

  “You never had a heart attack,” his wife retorted coldly.

  “What do you mean? I was at death’s door!”

  “He doesn’t get enough attention,” commented Shakhov’s wife under her breath.

  Before long, Marat and his mother were putting their shoes on in the entryway. The openwork shawl had come undone and its ends grazed the hardwood floor. As they saw their guests out, Shakhov kept up his monologue and his wife maintained a dignified silence. Shakh volunteered to drop Marat’s mother off at the department store and to take Marat home. After Marat’s mother got out and they pulled away from the store, the two friends were finally alone. Shakh burst out laughing:

  “What made you t
hink, Marat, that my cousin would be right for you? She’s a real dragon. Don’t you remember that time she came out to see me?”

  Marat did remember. Sabrina had come just once. They were about nine years old. The girls had a tea party for their dolls in Shakh’s shed, making sand cutlets and soup out of water and soggy bread crumbs. Little Sabrina spent the whole time whining and complaining. Nothing satisfied her. She needed to switch the dolls, she refused to be the guest, and insisted on being the hostess. Then the boys raided the party like a plague of locusts, knocking the neatly groomed and dressed dolls from their chairs, tipping the table over, sending the refreshments flying, and made off with the soup, the only thing that was edible. Marat seemed to recall that Rusik-the-Nail had been with them. Shakh assured him that he hadn’t been:

  “You’re mixing him up with Abdullaev.”

  “Really? Maybe so. How’s Abdullaev these days?”

  “He’s got his engagement party in a few days. You’re going, too. Aunt Khadizha said so.”

  “Oh yes, I remember. Yes, I am.”

  “He’s so gullible, I could make him believe anything, all kinds of weird stories that I’d heard in court. Though who knows, maybe they were true. Anything can happen.”

  “For example?”

  “Filthy stuff, you wouldn’t like it.”

  “I expect nothing less from you, Shakh.”

  “All right, then, here’s one. My colleagues told me about a security guard who raped a woman, a janitor in a village school. Or rather, she said that he had raped her, but the guard claimed that she consented.”

  “That’s the second time today this topic has come up,” Marat smirked.

  “Anyway, this janitor stands by her story. Says she screamed and tried to get away. They decide to check it out. The teachers would have heard her if she really had made a fuss. They conducted an experiment …” Shakh chortled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Picture this: They set up everything the way it was on that day, and had them act the whole thing out. And the defendant up and raped her again.”

  “What the …?”

  “I kid you not! They fired the prosecutor for it.”

  “Are all your fables below the belt?”

  “Le, don’t play naïve. There was one more story. This one supposedly took place in the city, in the police detective’s office. Also a rape.”

  “Shakh!”

  “Who does a better job of entertaining you than I do, Marat? So anyway, this one involves a carrot. It was material evidence, and was on a shelf in the investigator’s office. This co-worker comes in, and he’s hungry.”

  “Don’t tell me he …”

  “Eats the carrot!”

  Shakh brayed again. They drove past construction sites, canopied kiosks, and highway patrol posts, barricaded on all sides with sandbags. Drowsy soldiers holding automatic weapons peered out from behind the sandbags.

  “So who is Abdullaev going to marry?” Marat leaned back in his seat.

  “A regular girl. I myself helped investigate, checked up on her past. Everything nice and clean. Though Abdullaev has gotten himself in some deep shit. There’s a girl on the side, and she’s about to have a baby.”

  “What?!”

  “He’s a jackass. When we were in graduate school, he kept wanting to copy me, envying my success with the ladies. And he would spend his entire stipend on this one prostitute once a month, because that was the only way he could get laid.” Shakh again bared his strong white teeth.

  “I knew about that,” Marat said. “I used to get on his case about it.”

  “Know what else he used to do?” Shakh was on a roll. “He’d buy some Viagra in the drug store, gulp it down. Then he’d go to the sauna, to the prostitute. The point was, he could plow her several times in a row and save money that way.”

  Marat couldn’t stop himself, and joined his friend’s laughter. Abdullaev really was an idiot.

  “What about the girl he got pregnant? Did he buy her off?”

  “It’s the prostitute, duh! And she’s threatened to come to the matchmaking ceremony with her brothers and ruin everything.”

  “Does the bride know about it?”

  “Not yet, but she will soon.” Shakh smacked his lips and fell silent. Then he added: “And what’s up with you—have you decided to join my family?”

  “It’s my mother’s idea. But it sure doesn’t seem like I made a good impression on your cousin.”

  “Come on, level with me. It’s you—you don’t want to marry a dragon!” Shakh took his hand off the wheel and clapped Marat on the knee.

  They drove on toward the suburb. There wasn’t much traffic, and, judging from the undulating steppe grass and the dust devils up ahead, the wind had picked up. Soon the friends passed a gray, two-story barracks, which used to house the public baths. One time long ago, when they were kids, they had piled some bricks up against the bathhouse walls, forming a rickety tower, and had clambered up to the top. Teetering on tiptoe, they had peered in though the tall, steamed-up window of the women’s bath.

  It was Shakh, of course, who had come up with the plan. He came running to his friends with his eyes bugging out, and blabbed that he’d seen their math teacher naked, covered with lather. The teacher was a wheezy, big-breasted widow who pronounced her “g’s soft, like an “h,” in the southern way. Everyone wanted to have a look.

  They cast lots. Marat’s turn came last. He waited until the others, giggling quietly into their sleeves, had satisfied their curiosity. Though it was highly dubious that they had actually been able to see anything through the fogged-up windowpane. Most likely they’d just pretended, to impress one another.

  Marat was unable to verify this in person, though, since Rusik, who had already positioned himself with his left eye up against the glass, to the tune of suppressed snickers and queries from his co-conspirators from below, suddenly lost his balance. The clumsily piled-up bricks gave way in all directions, and the luckless peeping Tom clattered to the ground.

  “Who’s out there?” the guard hollered. Abdullaev hissed, “Atas! atas!” and the boys took off running, abandoning Rusik, who was flailing around in the brick pile. Marat later tried to convince himself that if he’d known Rusik couldn’t get up he never would have run off after the others. But his conscience refused to believe it and nagged at him: “Traitor! Traitor!”

  As it turned out, Rusik had broken his foot in the fall. The guard who caught him at the scene of the crime told his parents and the school director what had happened. Rusik was locked up at home with his ankle in a cast and nothing but books for company, and was forbidden to show his face outside. They said that his father had flogged him on his bare back with a rubber hose. Still, at the first sign of weakness from his keepers, Rusik hobbled out on crutches to join his friends in soccer and “hunters and ducks,” and never uttered a word of reproach.

  “Listen,” Shakh suddenly recalled. “There’s something going on tomorrow—a gathering at the club.”

  “What club?”

  “Ours, the one in town, in the auditorium. They’re even going to have a concert—in honor of Khalilbek.”

  “His supporters?”

  “Anyone who wants to get on his good side, just in case. The people think that Khalilbek is going to be released, and they need to show their loyalty. Shall we go have a look?”

  “Sure!” Marat agreed.

  Shakh dropped Marat off at his house and they parted in good spirits. Shakh rushed off in his Audi to prepare some appeals, and Marat checked his computer to see if there was any news from his Moscow colleagues about their big case.

  In the evening, Marat’s parents were home. His father sat amid a pile of manuscripts, and his mother stood on the veranda venting about their visit to the Shakhovs.

  “Sloppy, lazy, stuck-up, just sponging off her father and mother, no use to anyone. That’s what she is, that scrawny Shakhov girl! What good is a diploma if she can’t serve tea?�
��

  “I get it, Khadizha, I get it,” Marat’s father said, without looking at his wife.

  “And did you hear her defending those veiled women! Did you, Marat?! Before you know it, she’ll take the veil, and the Shakhovs won’t be able to do a thing about it. They’ve let her slip through their fingers. Dust on their shelves an inch thick! I checked with my finger.”

  “Didn’t you have anything better to do?”

  “Quiet, Aselder, you weren’t there! You would have been horrified too! And her mama, her mama …”

  “What?”

  “Makes herself out to be the Minister of Health. So what if she treated Khalilbek’s heart? I bet she pocketed at least a grand from him.”

  “If you don’t know something, then don’t say it, Khadizha. Why aren’t you saying anything, Marat?” His father looked up from his scrawled pages.

  “What can I say?” Marat gave an indifferent grin. “You’re the one who kept praising this Sabrina, Mama. So now just cross her off the list.”

  “You’re glad, aren’t you?” She was alarmed.

  “What do you mean, ‘glad’? But I’m getting the feeling that there’s not going to be anyone for me come August 13.”

  “Oh, we’ll find someone, you can be sure of that!” his mother said confidently. “We’ll go to the Abdullaevs’ engagement party, you can have a look around there.”

  Marat got up, went out onto the porch and strode onto the street, clattering the gate shut behind him. The wind blew a little cloud of sand into his face. The air was dry and stuffy, crickets sang, and dogs called out hoarsely to one another.

  A man came walking down the empty, dark street, greeted Marat quietly—“Salam alaikum”—shook his hand and continued on his way. Marat passed the house where Adik had lived—it was deserted and silent. Obviously the police colonel wasn’t home, the one who had taken possession of the house, who had beaten Mukhtar’s son Alishka, and who had crept in the window of the Salafi woman in the niqab. Marat suddenly recalled that no one had mentioned whether this malevolent officer of the law had a family. Most likely he did, but they probably lived somewhere in the city.

  The street stretched on monotonously, lined on both sides by gated fences until it dead-ended into a scrap heap, with the broad steppe behind it. Elevated gas pipelines ran to the suburbs, and beyond them the wetlands stretched on with their tangles of wild sedge. The red lights of the prison towers flickered in the distance. There, within its walls, Khalilbek languished, and the janitor, wanton Angela’s mother, swished her mop along its tiled floors.