“Don’t you recognize me, Marat?” she asked, a little too casually.
Then, noticing a crowd of old women hurrying toward the Avenue, she caught up to Marat and beckoned. It was Angela, the prison janitor’s daughter: tramp, slut, spawn of the devil—the girl had been called every name in the book. When he was still living at home, Marat had been drawn in by the strange power of this girl who was everyone’s lover; he had refused to believe the evidence before his eyes, and was terribly possessive. When he was alone with her, he had spouted the most ridiculous nonsense about his feelings. But one day the obsession passed, and it was as if it had never even happened.
Angela turned the corner, bumped a gate open with her hip, and slipped inside a courtyard, beaming back at Marat and beckoning with her pink finger. He followed her and found himself in a small room, which, to judge from the electric range, also served as her kitchen. Angela showed him to an old sofa, sat down opposite, and asked again:
“So, you didn’t recognize me, Marat?”
“Not right away.”
“I didn’t recognize you at first either. Your shoulders are broader now,” she giggled. “And me? Take a good look. I’m married.”
“Congratulations, I didn’t know …”
It seemed to Marat that he had plunged deep into the turbid waters of the Caspian and was trudging through a layer of thick, sandy mud at the bottom. His ears clogged up, and his body was drained of all its strength.
“Have you heard? Rusik-the-Nail was killed! It happened today,” he rasped, barely audibly.
Angela froze for a second, thrown off balance by the topic. Then she licked her lips, leaned forward toward Murat, and nodded her head, which was still covered in her scarfs.
“Of course. I even saw the doctors come. They tried their best, but couldn’t do anything. Rusik was always a little strange. And it was a strange way to die.”
“He was murdered,” Marat coughed, trying to clear his throat.
“What are you talking about, Marat? He fell flat on his skull on the concrete during a squabble with the guys. Always spoiling for a fight, that Rusik! Oof! What was that he had written on his placard?”
“‘I am an agnostic.’”
Angela snorted:
“Ganostic? People sure like to use big words these days … Someone told me that the placard was against Allah …”
She fell silent and strained her ears: from the porch came the sound of bottles dropping and rolling across the ground, and a orange tomcat poked his lecherous muzzle into the room. Angela hissed and stamped her foot loudly. The cat recoiled and vanished.
“Why aren’t you asking how things are with me, who my husband is?” she smiled sweetly again at Marat. He mumbled, glancing to one side, and rubbed his temple.
“I’m in shock about Rusik … First thing tomorrow I’m going straight to the investigator’s office in the city to ask him to consider the case without bias, without getting into any kind of ‘us versus them.’ Alishka is sure to be imprisoned, he’s been on their books for a long time now, but this is something new, with all the religion thrown in.”
“Marat, you’re not looking at me,” Angela sat beside him on the sofa and heaved a soulful sigh. “Want me to take off my scarf for you? No one is going to come in.”
“Why do you wear it anyway? When did you start?” Marat reluctantly raised his head and looked her over.
“My husband told me to, so I covered,” Angela brightened up and gave him a coy look. “He lives in Pyatigorsk, because it’s dangerous for him here. He’s an investigator on especially important cases, and they’re all getting murdered. Khalilbek was behind one of them.”
“Those are rumors. No one knows whether they’re true or not,” Marat turned away.
“Pooh-pooh,” drawled Angela. “‘No one knows!’ He sent your own brother, no more than a child, to the next world, and here you are defending him. Mama saw Khalilbek in prison once when he was being led down the hall. She says he was haggard, his skin was all green and he had dark circles under his eyes. One glance and you could see his conscience was tormenting him.”
“We were planning to go to the shore today,” Marat said suddenly.
“What?”
“Rusik and I. I can only imagine what they did to him when he tried that infantile stunt with the placard! And right in the center of town where everyone could see him!”
“Want to see something?” Angela interrupted, lowering her voice and adjusting the scarf that had slipped down onto her eyebrows.
“But I forgot about it. How could I!” Marat wasn’t listening. “Mama with her fortune-teller … And I could have prevented it.”
“Marat …”
“Meanwhile, Shakh is pulling out all the stops to get his friend out of trouble.”
“Marat! You’re not listening to me!” Angela clutched him angrily by the shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Marat shook off her hand. “I’m bringing you down. I shouldn’t have come. I’ll be on my way.”
And he stood up.
“Stop!” Angela snapped, springing up after him. “What, you’re going to get up and leave, just like that?”
She was panting, and her brows trembled, as though they didn’t know whether to come together and form a single line, or to rise up under the scarf, or to relax in sweet languor. Marat tugged at the tip of his nose, still looking past Angela and trying to come up with an excuse.
“Your husband will show up. He’ll see us and get the wrong idea.”
“I told you,” she beamed again, “my husband lives in Pyatigorsk, he has another family there. And I’m here. He only comes once every ten days and the rest of the time I’m so lonesome here all by myself!”
“‘So lonesome,’” Marat interrupted the temptress, “so give Shakh a call. Or some other guys. What do you need me for? Especially at a time like this. Rusik just died …”
“You’re really getting on my nerves with this Rusik of yours!” Angela gave him a shove. “You and I haven’t seen each other for such a long time, and look at you! Have you forgotten how you chased after me when you were a snot-nosed kid? You even wanted to marry me!”
“I’m not a snot-nosed kid any more, you can see that yourself.” Marat calmly and firmly eased her away from him. “And I don’t spend my time entertaining repentant sinners.”
Angela wrinkled her lips and punched him in the chest with her fist:
“Oh, so now you’re teaching me morals? Bringing up my past? I’m a decent woman now. A legally wedded wife, got it?”
“A second wife. A kept woman. Does the first wife even know about you? I bet she doesn’t.”
He went to the door, and she followed, beating him on the back and shouting:
“So what if I am a second wife? So what! It’s in the Prophet’s sunnah! It’s completely legal!”
When he reached the porch, she sprang to him, seized the collar of his shirt, and ran her hands across his body like an animal.
“You know you want to! You want to, but you’re afraid. Don’t be afraid …”
Marat tore himself away, and a button detached from his shirt and bounced down the wooden porch stairs. Angela darkened, and launched into a string of staccato curses:
“Ah, you … You reptile, so you’ve found some new girl? So you think you’re going to get married? Think again: may you be cursed, may the earth swallow you up on the very day of your wedding!”
Marat crossed the yard to the gate, and before he could get it open, one of the glass bottles that the cat had tipped over crashed and shattered against the iron gate.
9. AT ZAREMA’S
In the morning, we were expecting guests. I was scared it would be the Magomedovs: the chubby chatterbox, the mute veterinarian with the long nose, and the widowed mother. But I was lucky: the visitors were some of Mama’s distant relatives from the village. The mystery novels were stashed in a neat stack under the bed. a pot of sun-dried meat bubbled on the stove all morning. Mama s
tirred it with a huge ladle, occasionally interrupting her work to rush from room to room, issuing commands:
“Patya, polish the electrical outlets!”
“Patya, clean the tiles! Use only dry cleanser, and be sure not to leave any smears!”
“Patya, you lazybones! You didn’t clean the silver! Do it now! Make it snappy!”
Granny got her best fringed scarf out of the trunk. Papa washed the car and drove off to the city to pick up the visitors.
Aida dropped in, and naturally came up with all kinds of theories:
“Just wait, they’re bringing you a bridegroom.”
I brushed her off. “That’s the last thing I need!”
Finally they arrived, lugging heavy duffle bags. One of them was full of mulberries and apricots; the mulberries stained everything violet, and the apricots were a special aboriginal variety called khonobakh, “pull-eggs,” in Avar—tiny, orange, heart-shaped fruits with fine, shiny skin, pungent, fruity-smelling pulp, and pits that rolled out like tiny eggs. The second duffle bag contained jars of urbech, an ancient local delicacy: a paste made out of stone-ground roasted sunflower seeds, nuts, black flax, sunflower, apricot, and dark, brown hemp. The third bag held bottles of sweet and sour whey, fermented colostrum, packages of tvorog, and a bag of barley powder for brewing “beer kasha”—a delicacy just for women. In the fourth … but before I could scope out the fourth bag, Mama’s usual hostess panic set in—from the kitchen came a great racket: stampeding footsteps, shrill squeals, and the metallic clatter of spoons.
We gathered around the table, which was laden with corn khinkal and meat, along with bowls of bouillon, adjika sauce, urbech, and sour-cream garlic sauce. Simplicity and restraint: natural flavor, honest calories. My uncle and Papa immediately lit into the cognac. The two aunties settled down next to Granny, one on each side. Mama occupied one end of the table and I was seated opposite the singularly unimpressive-looking distant cousin they had brought along. I thought that he would blush and remain reserved in the presence of our family, as the village customs prescribed, but that was not at all the case. Without the slightest inhibition, he addressed me directly and struck up a conversation:
“I’ve been in Moscow myself. I did my military service there at the Kursk Station. I caught thieves there a couple of times. One time I found a bomb.”
“What, a real one?”
“It was a dummy. They were testing our vigilance. I liked it there. Helped establish discipline, worked to prevent bullying. I got promoted to sergeant early, and they recommended me for a military career, offered me a contract. I thought, that’s all well and good, but what’s the point? This is no career for a guy who likes his freedom. We worked in the metro too.”
“Those grim-looking soldiers who patrol in groups with dogs?”
“They look grim because they’re sleep-deprived. You never get enough sleep … Where do you live in Moscow?”
Mama caught the edge of the conversation and intervened sternly.
“Not ‘lives,’ but ‘used to live.’ She’s sponged off her brother long enough. Time for her to settle down back here with us.”
The cousin nodded imperceptibly in her direction and winked a mirthful eye at me.
“Tough on you, eh? As for me, I’m planning to move to the city. In the village I taught in a sports club: free-style wrestling and taekwondo. Within a year I had three southern district champions. They went on to nationals. Now I want to start coaching in the city.”
“Do you go to Moscow often?”
“Not really. I went once after I got out of the military, but didn’t see much—didn’t even go to the Lenin Mausoleum.”
“Why would you go there anyway?”
“You know, just to check it out. I’d stop in, pay the guy a visit, ask, ‘Is that really you lying there, man?’ Think I should, Patya?”
I giggled. I pictured this cousin of mine barging into the stifling, dead interior of the mausoleum, taking off his hat … Though what kind of hat would he even be wearing?
Meanwhile, Mama was talking about yesterday’s incident with Rusik.
“Imagine, he went out there with a placard saying ‘There is no Allah.’ Some of the young guys saw it, and naturally they got upset.”
“And right then and there he was struck down by lightning,” Granny declared, flaring her wide nostrils with authority.
“Come on, Mama, what do you mean, lightning?” Papa frowned irritably. “A Wahhabi from Mukhtar’s family, Alishka the roughneck, knocked Rusik down. That’s all there is to your lightning.”
“No, it was lightning,” Granny insisted, talking in our native language. “From on high. And without a drop of rain, too.”
“People are saying he just fell but I don’t believe a word of it. The neighbors saw it. They say there was a brawl,” Mama reported, piling more and more khinkal onto the plates of the protesting aunties. “What’s worse, they’ve gone out and rounded up a bunch of young people in connection with case. Not just that damned Wahhabi—they arrested the Abdullaev boy too. Abdullaev is one of Khalilbek’s associates, by the way. Small peanuts, of course, but, still, he has his own company in town. They are very well respected around here …”
“Their son’s engagement was broken off recently. And now he’s under suspicion of murdering that clown Rusik,” Papa added. “One misfortune after another.”
The tragic tale caused a great stir among the guests. The aunties ooh-ed and aah-ed, the uncle kept asking for more details, and the cousin nodded knowingly, tapping his index finger on the table, as though none of this was news to him.
“It’s the curse!” Granny announced. “At the engagement party that woman cursed the Abdullaev boy—said that he would rot behind bars. And, sure enough, here he is in prison.”
“What are you talking about, Mama! They’ll let the kid out,” Papa countered, chewing his meat. “Our young lawyer from town, Shakh, is a close friend of his. He’s already on the case.”
“‘Kid!’ Did you hear that? ‘Kid!’” Mama exclaimed scornfully. “This ‘kid’ of yours is prowling the city knocking up college girls.”
The cousin laughed again, silently, with his sparkling eyes.
The uncle proposed a toast: “May all these misfortunes pass us by!”
Glasses were again raised high and drained dry.
After lunch, the women closed themselves in with Mama to sort through some cloth. I could have joined them, but a wave of restless longing had came over me. Books tumbled from my hands. Under normal circumstances I would have tried to get in touch with Marina, but she had troubles of her own. In Bulgaria she had met a married man and had gotten tangled up in a vacation romance. They had agreed to continue the affair in Moscow. But what had started out so easy and carefree had turned into a whole drama, complete with damp, salty pillowcases and torrents of black jealousy directed at the lover’s lucky wife. Marina had drained every possible expression of pity, sympathy, encouragement, and consolation out of me, then had vanished from the scene—undoubtedly to cry it out on someone’s chest—a real, live, flesh-and-blood person, not some distant phantom like myself.
The uncle had gone off somewhere with Papa, and the cousin went into the city on some business of his own. The aunties tried all kinds of tactics to get me to go with him, hinting that surely I need someone to take me to the city. But I begged off. The moment the cousin set forth, though, I immediately put on my skirt and blouse and decided to go out for some air alone, with no entourage. My fear of Timur had subsided; he seemed to have abandoned his pursuit. After the incident with Rusik he had stopped barraging me with phone calls and text messages sprinkled with spelling errors. According to the neighbor woman with the silver tooth, Timur had also been mixed up somehow in yesterday’s accident (or murder, even); if he hadn’t actually shoved the disgraced atheist physically, at the very least he had shouted louder than the others, “Serves him right!”
I slipped out the gate and started walking slowly down t
he Avenue past the deaf-mute Gagarins’ house. Suddenly, a man rounded a corner and stopped, facing me. Marat! The man who had been on my mind constantly since the moment we’d met. Khadizha and Aselder’s son. Moscow lawyer. Shakh’s friend. His face profoundly familiar and dear. As though it were myself standing there, though a man.
He stopped short, hesitated, and his motionless black eyes stared into me. My heart gurgled and swelled to bursting inside me, my fingers trembled, and drops of perspiration dewed my upper lip.
“Hi, Patya,” Marat finally uttered with a warm smile. “Where have you been? Going far?”
“I’m just out for a walk.”
“Why don’t you answer the phone?”
“What, have you called me?” I exhaled.
“I called and called. You didn’t answer and you didn’t call back.”
“I didn’t see your calls, honest!” I exclaimed, terrified and, at the same time, dizzy with joy. “Wait, I remember. Someone called, but the caller ID was blocked. I thought it was someone else.”
I meant Timur. My face flushed red.
“You’re a clever one, now, aren’t you?” Marat laughed. “You clever thing, you …”
We continued down the Avenue. My body followed its own laws, unsubmissive to my will. I marveled that my legs knew which way to bend, that they did not snap in two.
“Did you hear about Rusik?” he asked, darkening.
“Of course. It’s terrible. I didn’t know him very well, I can’t understand why he did that. Why would he write on a placard that there’s no God?”
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