Bride and Groom

by Alisa Ganieva

  Marat continued down the deserted street toward the prison, his mind a chaos of thoughts—Sabrina’s petulant little nose, Shakhov’s anger, and all the work that awaited him in Moscow. His leave was short, and his mother’s fantastical enterprise was careening toward its inevitable failure. He was sure that no bride would be found, and that the banquet hall that had been reserved for the thirteenth would, on the thirteenth, be empty. He felt sorry for his parents, and at the same time found the whole thing hilarious. He kept walking through the sleeping town, coughing, or, maybe, laughing.

  5: A CONCERT TO REMEMBER

  Next morning, after cleaning the house, I put on my blue dress with the sparkles, the one Aida had suggested, and sat staring in dumb despair at my double in the mirror. My hair had grown down to my protruding collarbones; thick and disorderly, it poked out every which way like a windblown haystack, making my face look broad and flat. I could have rushed over to the neighbor’s and mooched her curling iron, but Timur was already waiting outside the school where we’d agreed to meet. On the phone he’d tried to get me to let him pick me up at my house. That was a little scary, and I made excuses. Timur pressured me:

  “I need to know where you live, you know, so I can meet your father.”

  “Why?” I winced.

  “What do you mean, why? To ask for your hand in marriage.”

  I shuddered; maybe it wasn’t a joke. Ultimately we had settled on the school, which was closed for summer vacation. Meanwhile, something had to be done about my hair. I resorted to a trick I’d learned back in high school, when the junior and senior girls used to let their hair down and set it without their family knowing.

  I plugged an ordinary clothes iron into the wall socket, knelt down, and spread my mane on the ironing board. Then I placed the hot iron on top of it and started tugging the hair out from underneath. Good thing no one caught me at this ridiculous operation. After five minutes of this, my curls straightened out and fell neatly, as though I’d just been at the beauty parlor.

  I hurried to the school on high heels that sank into the ground. Timur greeted me at the gate: “You look nice.”

  Oh no-o-o-o … He looked completely different from what I had pictured from his photos. Timur’s hair was blond and coarse, and stuck up like a hedgehog’s; his mouth had no lips to speak of, and above his wrinkled, sun-darkened brow his temples showed telltale signs of male pattern baldness. He was built low to the ground like a wrestler and his biceps swelled under the sleeves of his jacket—which he wore in spite of the heat—like thick sausages with the filling about to burst out of their skins. We started walking along the fence, and next to him I felt ungainly and as skinny as a beanpole. The wind gusted, billowing the hem of my dress, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed Timur periodically sneaking glances at my exposed knees.

  All my former expectations and hopes congealed into a hard lump, which leapt up inside me, squealing: “Make a run for it! Run, now!”

  But I couldn’t give him the slip so soon, and just fumed at myself for agreeing to go out in town with this burly stranger, right under the noses of my friends and family. Along the way, I tried to come up with a plausible story in case someone noticed the two of us out here by ourselves—looking like a couple—and would torment me with nasty conjectures. For his part, Timur didn’t seem the least bit concerned, quite the opposite—he was downright cocky and fully in control; he treated me as though I were his girlfriend, not a mere acquaintance. He asked about my parents and grandmother, told me about his family—his sister was a college student, his parents were building a two-story house near the mosque—and veered off into blatant self-promotion:

  “So I inspire the youth, like, to public service, you know. I organized, like, a cell. We meet and everything, we discuss the region’s pathways for spiritual and financial development, and, like, in the energy sector.”

  Back when we were communicating on the Internet, he had written to me about his zeal for public service and activism; oddly enough, that’s what had appealed to me. And his face on those fuzzy cell-phone photos had looked smarter, somehow, like that of a man of significance and promise. I had envisioned an encounter with a “thinking reed,” a visionary, transformative hero. But in real life Timur turned out to be a run-of-the-mill loudmouth, spewing vapid clichés. With unsightly, overdeveloped biceps, to boot.

  We turned onto the Avenue, where a fair number of people were out walking. Everyone was headed for the club, to the free concert in support of Khalilbek. I was relieved to be able to blend in with the crowd, but we still attracted glances from passers-by, both men and women. I had a kind of weird presentiment that at any minute they would all open their mouths at once and jeer, in chorus:

  Timur and Patya, sitting in a tree

  K-I-S-S-I-N-G …

  With an air of proprietary self-satisfaction, Timur led me along like some goat he’d bought at the bazaar, at a speed that was beyond my abilities to match. Along the way he shook hands with men he knew, and nodded importantly to local matrons in colorful kerchiefs, whose ample, shapeless garments billowed in the wind.

  “Timur, you’re probably going to be busy. Let’s just get together at the concert,” I finally proposed.

  “What, like, have you’ve forgotten?” he was taken aback. “We’re going to the meeting first. I already told our activists that I would, like, bring a girl from here who has experience working in the Moscow courts and everything.”

  “I don’t know a thing. All I do is bind papers.”

  “What are you talking about, Patya! What, like, I can’t introduce you to my colleagues? I mean, you’re like one of the family!” Timur smiled.

  How? How could I be like one of the family when I had never even seen him before? It was true, we had communicated online for five months; though meager, irregular, and intermittent, it was still a correspondence. The locals would interpret it as a pledge of true affection, love and fidelity … How could I have made such a mistake? Why had I led him on?

  The questions whirled around in my head, stupefying me. I ascended the steps of the club in a daze, like a sleepwalker.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Timur soothed me, misinterpreting my agitation. “You won’t have to, like, make a speech or anything. Just sit and listen, maybe ask a few questions.”

  The office featured a solemn array of official-looking flags on tripod poles. A dozen or so muscular young men in business suits sat around a round lacquered table. When Timur entered the room they all rose like schoolboys greeting their teacher. Everyone shook hands. Then Timur brought me a cup of tea on a gilded saucer, with two lumps of cane sugar. The moment I started stirring my tea, he took out his phone and snapped a picture of me from above, from an unflattering angle.

  “To mark the occasion,” he explained. “I’ll show my family.”

  I cringed and said nothing. A girl of about thirty in a business skirt clicked into the room on high heels and turned on a Dictaphone.

  “All right, then, like,” began Timur, rising from his seat and pressing the pads of his fingers together. “Today we gather on the night of the concert, like, dedicated to a worthy son of our Motherland, Khalilbek. But, you know, our agenda includes not only the fate of this toiler, scholar, and citizen who cares so deeply for his people, but also, you know, the upcoming youth camp forum. Kids come to this camp, like, from all the towns and villages of the region. It’s so important for our government, you know, to take on itself the spiritual and patriotic education of the youth …”

  Everyone listened solemnly, focusing intently on Timur’s lipless mouth. The girl even jotted down some hasty notes.

  “There are going to be seminars for sharing experience and panel discussions to encourage dialogue, and they’ll set up dance floors and courts for sports competitions.”

  “Is there going to be wrestling?” someone asked.

  “Of course!” Timur exclaimed. “But the most important thing is the spirit of unity, like, coming together. Bec
ause what do our authorities need to do their job successfully? The youth. So let us provide this support in a spirit of friendship! We have already made some very important contributions: we’ve given out St. George ribbons to inspire patriotism among the population, and gathered humanitarian aid for refugees from the imperialist countries. I’m, like, so glad that the guys out there unanimously supported our ‘Like Chorus’ project: hundreds of kids simultaneously ‘liked’ the tweets of our region’s leaders!”

  “Is there going to be another one like that?” The listeners stirred.

  “Maybe. We can’t talk about it today, you know, with the concert about to start. People go, like, why does our association support Khalilbek? Intriguers are like, hey, are we really going against what the higher-ups in the government are saying?”

  “Right, Timur, people are on me about that, too!” nodded the girl.

  “Here’s what you need to tell them,” Timur instructed crisply: “That our youth association is, like, constructive, and only works in cooperation with our official mentors at the higher levels. They have more wisdom and experience and everything. They protect us from, like, the temptations of extremism, drug addiction, and other social evils.”

  “So true!” the girl agreed.

  “Anyway,” my suitor strode out in front of the round table. “Like, I have personally met with some deputies, and with other, so to speak, respected khakims too. All of them say they, like, value what Khalilbek has done for our region’s advancement. No one has even come close to claiming that his arrest was justified. It could be a conscious strategy to trick the real crooks into letting up their guard. Or like, some stupid mistake on the part of the cops.”

  I should have kept my mouth shut, but something made me jump in:

  “All right, let’s grant we don’t know anything about the dastardly crimes that Khalilbek supposedly committed,” I said, surprising myself with my vehemence. “But we do know the minor stuff. That he built a casino on illegal land in town …”

  “When was that? A hundred years ago!” They spoke in unison, like a choir.

  “Patya,” Timur gaped at me, bewildered. “Your own father, like, worked for Khalilbek, how can you say something like that? Plus, they closed that casino a long time ago.”

  “Moved it into a basement near the mosque” giggled the girl with the notebook.

  “I’m simply stating the facts.”

  “The facts!” Timur exclaimed, raising his index finger and silencing the group. “And you know, like, facts come from the devil himself.”

  The listeners rustled. “Tell us what you mean, Timur, explain it to us!” they whispered.

  Timur was all fired up; he launched straight into a sermon: “Do you recall, friends, what the devil used to tempt Adam, alaikhi salam, and Eve? Reason! He appealed to reason. He said: ‘Allah does not permit you to pluck the fruit of the tree of knowledge, because he fears losing power over you.’ And the first humans did not heed his teaching. They heeded not, and they fell. The only, like, salvation from reason, which tempts us and sets us down the pathway to hell, is faith. If a man comes up to you and begins using facts, arguments, and logic to challenge your faith, and your, like, faith begins to waver, know that this man is the devil’s accomplice.”

  Oddly enough, what he said cheered me up. If he saw me as the devil’s accomplice, maybe Timor would release his grip. But no such luck. He stared deep into my eyes, wrinkled his tanned forehead, and orated on, leering at me with his lipless mouth:

  “It is particularly easy, you know, for a beautiful girl to stray from the true path. We observe the vice of the West, and we stumble. Especially girls, with their weaker minds. But there is one salvation, you know, and that is to remember. To continually remember that degeneration and vice are mutations pressing in on us from outside. And our country is the only zone that remains uninfected.”

  “Mutations,” a big husky guy on my left, rapt, repeated quietly. The girl scribbled energetically in her notebook.

  “Right!” Timur cried, paying no attention to the rogue rays of sunlight playing in his bristly blond crew-cut. “Look at the debauchery going on in America and Europe. It’s all mutations!”

  “Without mutations, though,” I interrupted, “there is no evolution.”

  Total silence.

  “What’s this about evolution?” sneered a guy with a youth camp badge on his jacket lapel and ears maimed from boxing.

  The others sat respectfully, waiting for Timur to respond. He stopped pacing from corner to corner and gave a loud snort. Then he leaned on the edge of the table, opened his mouth, and, after a moment of silence began to reciting to me deliberately and wearily, as though to a particularly dimwitted pupil:

  “There is no such thing as evolution. Darwin’s theory, you know, proved its own invalidity. The first man, Adam, alaikhi salam, was created by God out of clay.”

  I even snickered, it was so unexpected. How could I have corresponded with this loser for a whole six months and not seen through him? Why was it only now, after we had met in person, that I realized what a moron he was?

  “The dinosaurs …” I began, at a loss.

  “The dinosaur bones were forged by kafirs,” the guy with the mangled ears corrected me.

  “A complete fiction, the whole thing. A plot against true believers by the sinful world,” Timur chimed in.

  I cast a pleading look at the girl, but she was nodding ecstatically.

  “Look, it’s not like we’re in the mosque on the Avenue right now, and the last time I checked you were not a mullah, Timur.” I had managed to get my bearings, but at that moment a plump woman in a gilt-embroidered scarf, with scarlet-painted lips, appeared at the door.

  “The concert is about to begin. Timur, you are on the program. Don’t let me down,” she announced in a voice that came from deep in her belly, then flitted away.

  “That’s all for today. We’ll meet again tomorrow, same time, same place,” Timur said.

  The girl reached over to turn off the Dictaphone, and everyone rustled and murmured. Timur came up to me and reproached me indulgently:

  “What are you saying? Did your year in the big city make you forget your roots? Don’t worry, we’ll spend some time together, just the two of us, and get this foolishness out of your pretty little head.”

  “Actually, Timur, thank you,” I recoiled, barely holding back my irritation. “It was interesting for me to sit in. But I have to run.”

  “Wait,” commanded Timur. “We’re going to the concert together. That’s, like, what you wanted to do. You said so yourself.”

  I couldn’t come up with a response. When we went down to the auditorium, the program had already begun. The seats were full, including benches that had been specially brought in; people were even sitting on the floor on old newspapers.

  The local school director was making an announcement from the stage:

  “Neighbors, recall all those times Khalilbek stepped in and saved us from disaster! People disappear—Khalilbek finds them. The water gets cut off—Khalilbek gets it turned on. People get into conflicts—Khalilbek reconciles them. Our club or the school gets shorted in the budget—Khalilbek arranges for subsidies. He’s not simply a man, not simply a citizen. He’s our rock, our cliff, mighty as a mountain. Nothing can break him, not even the strongest battering rams! There’s no way to explain what happened, the fact that he’s not here with us, but behind bars! It’s impossible, it’s strange, it’s crazy. I refuse to believe he’s guilty!”

  The hall erupted in applause.

  “I’m sure the time will come when we will say ‘salam alaikum’ to him!” cried the director, but his voice was drowned in a frenzied ovation.

  I saw Aida, recognized her by her turban. She was waving to me from the other side of the hall, with her thumb raised in the air in the Roman gesture of mercy. I was sitting on a square plastic milk-bottle crate that Timur had slid over for me. He stood regally beside me with his legs spread wide,
responding occasionally to greetings from acquaintances. His entire team, including the girl with the notebook, had fanned out and taken places throughout the dimly illuminated hall.

  The first song was announced, the hall filled with sound, and the audience roared. The first singer was a woman from the city. A deafening audio track kicked in, and some idiot in a track suit leapt up onto the stage from the first rows and started to dance a Lezginka around the singer. The audience howled with laughter, and Timur stuck his fingers into his mouth and gave an ecstatic whistle. This was the last straw. I began plotting my escape.

  At the chorus, the singer’s trills spilled over into a blood-curdling shriek. The die-hard girls in front hooted and hollered, singing along hoarsely. I scanned the hall again, looking for Aida, but her turban had vanished behind the backs of the spectators who had leapt to their feet and were dancing ecstatically, flicking their fingers in the air.

  The singer had barely finished, when another woman appeared onstage. This one launched into a special song about Khalilbek. I could hardly make out the words—just:

  Our Khalilbek’s name

  Will bring glory and fame.

  Timur bent over from behind and yelled straight into my eardrum:

  “I know her personally! I can introduce you!”

  Oh, great. I twitched and shook my head.

  After the song, some deputy was called up onto the stage. He huffed and puffed, got his words mixed up, and sprayed saliva into the microphone.

  “Khalilbek is like a father to me. He is my rod and my staff. Like an elder brother. He advised me, supported me constantly. I even … my yacht … I mean, it’s not a yacht … my boat … I named it in his honor after this one dodgy case. Let me tell you about it. The boat was registered to the state fishing collective. And me and Khalilbek would go out for sturgeon … I mean, not sturgeon, of course. Herring, of course, nothing more, we’d just go out and scoop up a few white bream and that would be it. So anyway, this one time we’re riding the boat past the Black Stones, and Khalilbek gets out an axe and—THWACK!—brings it down right into the deck!”