The reed flautist, Sahar, set down her flute and passed among the dancers. When she got to Nat’s side of the sheet, he saw she was carrying a ball of elm gum. Like fish feeding on ground bait, dancers crowded round to pinch a peck. To Nat’s confusion, everyone then stuck a blob of gum onto their foreheads into which they pressed a coin. Soon coins on foreheads were bobbing about the barn like boat lanterns on the Thames.
Sahar stood before him, rubbed a peck of elm resin between her palms, and stuck a gobbet of gum to his forehead. He handed her a silver abbassi which she fixed to his forehead. As she pressed it to his skull, the band struck up a new tune. Her face fell.
‘Oh, they’ve started the next one without me,’ she said.
‘That means you’re free to dance,’ said Nat, but she disappeared without a word. He supposed she was rushing to rejoin the band until her face bobbed up on the other side of the swaying sheet. He tossed the elm gum globe to a small boy, who caught it in both hands and ran off, a swarm of children running after him into the barnyard.
From what Nat could see of it, Sahar’s dance looked very like Jenny Pluck Pears. Moments later, he and Sahar’s top halves were dancing in perfect unison, plucking an imaginary orchard’s invisible pears. When she disappeared to play the next song, Nat danced on alone for song after song. He had forgotten the bliss of dancing, the way it made you feel ten feet tall. Elation seemed to aerate his lungs with pure air, even in the humid crush of this musty barn.
Taking a breather and wiping the sweat from his face and neck, Nat was the only dancer who noticed the six dervishes take to the dance floor and spread out like dots on a dice. At first they hardly seemed to be dancing at all, yet the small movements they did make absorbed their whole concentration. Their eyes were closed as their bodies twisted and swayed. Then, by a spooky coincidence of will, each dervish began simultaneously to spin. The dance floor soon cleared of everyone except the six whirling dervishes, their heavy skirts fanning out higher the faster they span, dispersing the other dancers to the walls of the barn, as if by centrifugal force.
A thrill of subversion ran through the onlookers. The Sufi dervishes were all but outlawed by Shah and majlis. Their dance was the emergence of a powerful subterranean current in Persian life. It was a dance of defiance. Nat believed he understood what the subversive dance was saying better than anyone in the barn, and what it said to him was very plain:
There are other powers than those that rule.
The dervishes’ revolving shoulders snatched their heads round in crisp clean strokes. The faster each dervish spun, the more composed he seemed to be. The whirling dervishes came together, horizontal skirt hems touching like adjacent cogs. The spectators stamped and cheered as the dervishes reached peak rotational speed. One by one, each dervish emerged from his blur, and came to a stop. With broad smiles on their faces, not a spiritual trance at all, the dervishes beckoned everyone back to dance, and joined in with the ordinary dancing.
Nat saw Gol and Mani dancing together, their hands joined over the sagging tangerine sheet. He went out into the cool night air, and found Darius.
‘Don’t go in the barn for a little while, my friend,’ he told him.
‘Are they dancing together?’
Nat didn’t reply. Darius listened. He could hear reed flute, dombak and dulcimer - but no tanbur. Yes, she was dancing with him. He felt cold and sickly.
Back in the barn, Darius’s mother, Leila, standing behind the food table watched Gol and Mani dancing. If her son had eyes in his head than he must see what everyone else in this barn could see: the rapture on Gol’s face when she was dancing with that handsome musketeer. They were really in love, those two. They looked right together - the girl with the fabric flowers in her hair, and the tall slim man whose loose sleeves revealed forearms studded with burns of honour and striped by frayed and bloodstained bandages, the only disorderly thing about him. Her son, on the other hand, still looked scruffy even in his new clothes.
Leila knew, with a mother’s instinct, that Gol was not a spoon for Darius’s mouth. Why couldn’t he see it? He should stop pining, find a new woman, move on. Let his new fortune make him a new Darius. She’d help him. She’d cut that cord. He might not thank her now, but he’d thank her later when he had a wife and children. A plain wife more suited to him. A wife who’d be faithful to him, not a woman already smitten by a fine young soldier.
Her scattergood son had given her funds with which to buy all manner of cooked meats and fine wines, but Leila knew it was a waste of money to buy delicacies from the bazaar. Far better to bake your own fare. No-one would notice the difference. And rather than buy expensive fine wines, she’d used those stocks of Shiraz that a friend couldn’t sell because they’d been left out in the sun too long.
Her son might have a fat purse for an afternoon but when that was gone - and with all this profligate feasting, dancing and chasing after unattainably beautiful women it soon would be - all he’d have left would be his family. He had to learn, one way or another, that he couldn’t just buy his way out of family duty. She was sure Darius could still be prevailed upon to do that sigheh. Leila smiled as the handsome musketeer approached her food and drink stall.
Nat and Darius sat on a low bough of the zigzag mulberry watching the moon disappear behind a black cloud.
‘The silver coin,’ said Darius, ‘drops from the dancing night.’
‘Is that a poem, dostum?’
‘It’s real life. We’re on our way,’ he said and clinked a gold toman against the coin glued to Nat’s forehead, dropped it back into the red velvet purse, and handed the purse over. He told him the brilliant news about how they could go into business together as Uruch Bey’s oil merchants.
‘Say you will come in on this venture with me.’
‘With all my heart, Darius.’
‘I should warn you that war will make the road to Tabriz a dangerous one, my friend.’
‘We’ll have good luck. Tomorrow belongs to the misfit. Those who don’t fit the present shape the future.’
‘Like my grandmother’s poor Sufis in their hillside hovels? No, alas, the powerful rulers shape the future. Look at Shah Abbas and your old master, look at their embassy to the Christian Princes: an exchange of gifts here, a letter sent there, and a wildfire of war burns from horizon to horizon.’
‘An exchange of gifts, is it? Well, now, that reminds me! Here, I have a gift for you. I bought it in the bazaar.’
‘You went to the bazaar? Are you mad? What if you were seen?’
‘In these clothes?’
Nat reached into his doublet and pulled out the gift.
Brilliant white silk bloomed in the dark. A silk wedding blanket hemmed in ivory brocade. A series of tiny coral tubes were stitched to its corners with silver thread.
‘A sofre aghd,’ said Darius, in a hushed voice. ‘Did you know this is what the couple sit upon during the wedding service? Did you know this is what the wedding gifts are spread out upon?’
‘For you and Gol.’
Just then the tanbur’s metal strings come clashing in on the song. Gol must have stopped dancing with Mani and was strumming again. The clouds lifted from Darius’s face. He pocketed the silk blanket, and began cavorting around the barnyard, doing crazy dances with Nat. They were soon joined by a crowd of children who were spinning themselves dizzy, little, white-smocked blurs whirling round and round and toppling over. The children’s foreheads now sported an odd miscellany of objects: sequin, pebble, peach stone, mother-of-pearl, button, mulberry, like the small shiny objects stitched to the wedding blanket. Nat and Darius picked up one child after another and span them round by an arm and a leg.
Then Nat and Darius, hand in hand, began dancing towards the barn. Darius was following the steps of Nat’s Dance Of Joy At New Employment when Mani and his two comrades stormed out of the barn, and barged past him.
‘Selling food to invited guests!’ spat Mani. ‘You are a cheap, despicable man, Darius Nou
redini.’
Darius was confused. He watched the three soldiers disappear down the lane into the night. ‘Selling food to invited guests…’ He ran into the barn and straight to where his mother stood behind the food table.
‘What have you done?’
‘They all love my lamb stew,’ she replied.
Blank spots jigged in his eyes. As he blinked them away, he saw to his horror a brass dish full of shahidis and larins on the table.
‘What have you done?’ he cried, dizzy with fury.
‘Yes,’ said Masghoud. ‘The lamb has been selling very well.’
‘No!’ shouted Darius. ‘No! You do not sell the food!’
‘As you wish,’ said Leila primly. ‘What about the wine?’
‘No! No! No! Nothing is to be sold! Nothing! Everyone here in this barn is a guest!’
Leila leant forward over the bean curd.
‘How can you be sure?’ she asked conspiratorially.
Darius was struck dumb. It would take a year and a day to try to explain to his mother what was wrong with this question and she still wouldn’t understand. When at last he spoke it was only to find out how much damage had been done to his name:
‘How many people have you sold food to?’ he asked.
‘That was the first bowl we asked payment for,’ replied Masghoud.
‘Was it?’ Darius asked his mother.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘No, it wasn’t! You are shaming me! You are shaming Khanum! This food is to be given free to everyone! Everyone!’
‘Bless you, Darius,’ laughed his mother indulgently. ‘Always loving an argument! Even tonight! Tonight of all nights! You go and enjoy yourself! We’ll take care of all the food and drink.’
Darius whirled away and found Gol staring straight at him while she strummed her tanbur. He was mortified. She had seen him shouting at his own mother. He smiled weakly, rooted to the spot, until Nat hooked his arm and danced him round and round, before spinning off on his own, in giddy joy. Stripping The Willow up and down the barn, Nat crooked his arm with whosoever came his way, weaving in and out, until he stood before the musicians. He gestured for Gol to set down her instrument, and pulled her to her feet. Together they skipped along the tangerine sheet, all along the barn, where he presented her to Darius, and withdrew.
Darius and Gol stood face-to-face either side of the division sheet. Over the sheet, came his hand, up to the sheet came hers.
As they swayed and zigzagged down the barn, the sheet spooled with them, a tangerine eel flowing along a riverbed, following their hips and shoulders as they danced their fluid, gentle measure.
Gol and Darius were wholly unaware that they had become the centre of attention, the only couple now dancing. Both were oblivious to everything except the alteration that was taking place in them on their first ever dance together.
Stepping backwards, Gol drew Darius towards her as far as the sheet allowed, and then Darius drew her towards him as far as the sheet allowed. She had the sensation that she was collecting Darius, piece by piece, and that he was collecting her, piece by piece. It was a careful, tender task, this collecting of one another. That was why they had to step so lightly.
The song ended. Gol looked up and saw they were alone on the dance floor. She dropped Darius’s hand and hurried scowling back to the band. She sat in with the other musicians.
‘Play fast!’ she snapped.
Gol bowed her kamanche six-eight time, Maryam thwacked her goblet-shaped drum, Nargis blew a fidgety melody on the reed flute, Sahar hammered the santur’s strings and together they launched into a skipping rhythm which soon filled the dance floor again. Everybody was dancing and leaping and the first coins dropped to the floor. Gol heard the dancers cheer each coin that dropped. The rest of the band ululated as one, swapping looks of awe at the power their music wielded over the polled unicorns, a stump of elm gum on their foreheads and all dancing madly. But all Gol was aware of was that she loved the dear dancing bear. Tonight she had danced with Mani and she had danced with Darius, and it was Darius who had discombobulated her. Poor Mani! It was Darius she loved.
Darius was sitting in darkness under the zigzag mulberry staring at the wedding blanket. He ran his fingers over its brocade and touched the coral tubes, sequins and glass beads stitched into the white silk with silver thread.
‘Why does Nat have more faith in my future than I?’ he wondered. ‘Why can he act as if Mani Babachoi did not exist, when I cannot?’
He looked up to find Gol walking through the white blurs of dizzy children. He hurriedly stuffed the wedding blanket into his pocket. Two warm, long-fingered hands took hold of his. He had never seen Gol’s face so close. She kissed him on the lips. He leaned back against the tree trunk and she leant on him. Her head-tire of fabric flowers pressed uncomfortably into his cheek, snagged his top lip and hooked one nostril. Still, he didn’t want to move. He told himself that life had become like an illustrated lyric - he and she on a bough embracing in the light of a silvery moon. Life had become Like This.
They heard guests bidding farewell to each other. A black horse whinnied somewhere in the field beyond the fence. The barn seemed far away, until they heard Maryam’s voice calling Gol’s name.
The spell was broken. Gol sprang from his arms and ran through the firefly blur of spinning children to the barn, where Maryam, Sahar and Nargis were talking to Darius’s mother.
‘If it’s weddings you play, girls,’ Leila was saying, ‘we shall want to hire you for a wedding in a week or two.’
Gol was glad it was a business discussion - dry land after swamp. She tried to focus her mind on everyday matters. Yet how weird to think that she herself might soon be calling this woman ‘mother’. Right then, Leila gave her a look as if she had read her mind, and Gol blushed hotly. Leila turned to her husband and said:
‘What do you think, Masghoud, shall we engage these girls for the sigheh?’ The band looked uneasily at each other. Gol spoke for them.
‘You must excuse us,’ she said. ‘A sigheh is not quite a proper wedding. We cannot play for you.’
‘What do you mean it’s not quite a wedding?’ returned Leila. ‘For me, it is more than a wedding because it is my only son’s only wedding. So, you must play. There. It’s settled.’
‘Your son?’ asked Gol.
‘My boy has set his heart on this so badly.’
‘Which son?’
‘God has granted me but one son,’ Leila replied, ‘Darius, my only son, is to be wed next week or the week after! It has been arranged for months!’
The ground reeled beneath Gol’s feet. She could feel her friends’ eyes upon her, but refused to meet their looks, to suffer their pity. Months! It had been arranged for months! This meant Darius’s whole courtship of her had been a lie! That explained the wedding blanket she had just seen him stuffing into his coat. It was for the sigheh. No wonder he was so furtive and hasty in hiding it. Poor Mani, she had betrayed him for a lie. Staring at her feet, she heard Maryam speak to her. No words! thought Gol, and fled the barn, running down the lane into the night.
After Gol had left him behind the twisted tree trunk, Darius got down on his hands and knees by the mulberry roots to thank Almighty God, the Most Gracious, the Ever Living, the One Who Sustains and Protects All That Exists, for the greatest blessing of his life: Gol. When he stood up again, clouds were disrobing the moon, just like in Rumi’s Like This.
When someone quotes the old poetic fancy about
clouds disrobing the moon,
unknot the ties of your gown one by one,
let your loose gown fall open, and say,
‘Like this?’
Life had become a song. So much so that Darius began to worry if what happened just now behind the mulberry tree meant what he thought it meant and was not a mere enchanted moment. He needed to go back to the barn, and have Gol vouch for what had happened, for what it meant. Of course, he wasn’t such a fool as to expect her to hold
his hand in front of everybody, she had to break off with Mani Babachoi first. Yet he needed her to acknowledge - by a whisper, or look, or touch - that they were really going to live their lives together. He brushed the mud from his palms and knees, and walked into the barn.
He couldn’t see Gol anywhere. She was not beside Kulsum, who had fallen asleep with a child on her lap. Nor was she by his mother who was loading food in cloth-covered jars. Nor was she with Maryam, Sahar and Nargis, either, but they were staring at him coldly.
‘Why don’t you leave her alone, you liar?’ said Sahar.
‘What lie?’ he asked, but without a word the band members shouldered their instrument bags and walked out of the barn.
Darius was bewildered. What had happened? His mother came to him and said,
‘Oh, my poor boy, she’s gone to her Mani, you see.’
He looked at her in perplexity, sick with nerves. What was she saying? What did she mean? He ran out of the barn and onto the road, but there was no sign of Gol anywhere. He understood nothing except that he had somehow lost her forever. He sank to the ground in the road.
He recognised more of himself in the man who had lost Gol, than in that strange Darius whom she’d kissed, filling his body with golden light as he felt her mouth upon his. The kissing and the fabric flowers indenting his cheek - it had all been an engine devised by Fate only to produce this perfect occultation of the New Darius. Nothing less could have done it, nothing less could have shattered the new man. Nothing less on his triumphant homecoming party, the night of his great celebration, could have made him lie face down in the dirt, claw at the roadside weeds and writhe in the dirt. Nothing less than love being given after years of waiting and then snatched back again in a matter of minutes.
The Trade Secret Page 15