The elders murmured in approval. Anarbek stuck out his chest and gave Jeff a swift, hard pound on the back.
Jeff hated his own duplicity. There was no progress. In a country whose guiding principles seemed based on the art of deception, he was as guilty as the next of saying one thing when the opposite was true.
“You know,” the akim said, nodding at Jeff, “Anarbek’s daughter teaches English too.”
“Yes, I have met her.”
“She is a beauty,” one of the workers murmured, and Anarbek squinted at him until he lowered his head. “Too beautiful for me!”
“She is not married yet,” Dushen said.
“What about you, Jeff Hartig? Will you stay with us here? Will you marry a Kyrgyz woman?”
Jeff glanced at a calendar model through the corner of his eye. A bit of her white neck was just visible beneath the high collar of her blouse. It occurred to him that Nazira was more striking than this woman, and he wondered what it would be like to live with her, to be a Kyrgyz man, to remain here. What would it be like to stay in this village for fifty years, to live the rest of his days surrounded by the highest mountains in the world, to measure time by the rise and fall of the snow on the peaks, to have her cook bread for him, to raise children with her, to forget the dreary realities of car-insurance rates and commuter traffic? For long moments he entertained the fantasy of settling in the village and giving up the more complicated world.
Jeff smiled and answered the question with one of his stock Russian phrases. “Posmotrim.” We will see.
Anarbek patted Jeff’s knee and laughed heartily. “I will see. Don’t you worry, my friend. I will see.” His hand clenched Jeff’s bare kneecap, now covered in goose bumps. “Our guest is freezing!” He grabbed a towel from a far seat and draped it over Jeff’s shoulders.
Radish stood and brought over his kalpak. “Put this on. Do you know what is so special about the kalpak ?”
“Tell me.”
“In the winter, it traps the heat and keeps your head warm. In the summer, the air inside stays cold and keeps your head cool. It is the only hat in the world with this kind of microclimate.”
Jeff sat back on the cushioned bench, the tall kalpak on his head. He adjusted the towel, wrapped like a cape over his shoulders. He sipped his chai, belched, then slurped the last drops. He had never felt more Kyrgyz.
The organization that was overseeing privatization, USAID, had just opened its first satellite office in Talas. Jeff was on his way to pick up his monthly salary at the bank when he passed it for the first time. The office had taken over the abandoned hall of sports, next to the boarded-up cinema. There was a carnival atmosphere around the building; a crowd of hundreds had gathered on the street, vendors were selling potato pieroshki, and volunteers were handing out limonad—an undrinkable carbonated imitation of soda. Ten wide stone steps, shaded by an immense concrete overhang, ascended to the entrance, where two hefty speakers were blasting a Kyrgyz rap song—“Amerikan Girl”—out over the square. A banner proclaiming MENCHEEKTESHTEEROO, the recently invented Kyrgyz word for privatization, was draped above the doorways, and out of every window hung posters proclaiming PRIVATIZATSIA in Cyrillic block letters.
Anarbek had been railing against privatization that very morning, saying it would certainly mean the end for the village. A system of auctions was to be held in the coming months, and coupons would be distributed to all state workers, based on salary and years of service. The public could use the coupons to purchase shares in private enterprises or could sell them as stock on the newly opened exchange in Bishkek. Nobody believed any of this would work. Jeff had asked Anarbek what he expected to do if the factory oversight was discovered, if they lost the wages. Anarbek told him they always had their fields to farm. Potatoes and beans: that’s what they would resort to.
Around the square, volunteers were distributing plastic buttons and T-shirts decorated with the emblem of the new nation’s flag—a rising red sun—and the word MENCHEEKTESHTEEROO. Handful by handful they threw the gifts into the crowd. The children who caught the shirts put them on and immediately drew jeers. The shirts came in only one size—extra large—and reached their ankles.
As Jeff watched, a young official stepped onto the street and handed him a button. The man wore a thin gray suit that made him look absolutely official, from the tips of his shining brown loafers to his combed fox-hair shapka, and he possessed in common with other government officials the stoutness of a mule, a grating voice, and the brusque manners of a high school football coach. Jeff introduced himself, and the man was especially impressed to hear he worked in the tiny village of Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka. “I am certainly honored to meet you,” he said, “someone who has worked so hard to help improve our country.” He gripped Jeff’s shoulder. “My name is Bolot Ismailov. You will join us for lunch and sit beside me.”
Jeff twisted free of Bolot’s firm grip, apologizing and explaining he had to hurry to the bank, before it closed, in order to get his salary. The official seemed only mildly insulted. Jeff stuffed the button in his pocket, reminded himself to hide it from Anarbek, and continued on. He sloshed his way through the mud in the park, past the memorial statues and the Ferris wheel, up to the bank—a one-story stucco building with corroded metal gates attached to the front door. Each month he had collected his living allowance here. The Peace Corps claimed to pay volunteers roughly the average salary of the local population, but Jeff was uncomfortably aware that he made ten times what the villagers earned each month. Inside, after a thirty-minute wait for service at the wooden counter, he filled out forms in triplicate, presented his passport and work visa, and received a receipt for his full salary, stamped four times in blue. This he carried to the single window in an adjoining room, where customers jostled in a rugby scrum for position, then barked at the overwrought cashier.
Earlier in the year Jeff had been timid, and it had taken most of the afternoon to receive his cash. He had also been embarrassed when the pensioners around him watched the cashier’s fingers double-check his enormous salary. But by now he had become a veteran customer. He elbowed his way past an elderly woman and two young men and received his money with hardly any wait at all. As the teller counted the stack of bills to herself, one man to Jeff’s right—a thick-necked youth in a gray sweater—counted each bill out loud. When Jeff pocketed his money, the man turned and announced the American’s salary to the crowded room.
Outside it was growing dark. In the park Jeff noticed the man from the bank, accompanied by two tall friends, following him. At the memorial statue he prepared to smile, nod, and let them pass. But they beckoned him, and he knew he was in trouble as they approached more quickly. He could tell from their swollen eyes they had been drinking. All three wore MENCHEEKTESHTEEROO buttons.
“American?” one asked in English, a puff of breath swirling from his mouth.
“Gooddayhowareyousir?” another said.
The third, the one who had counted aloud in the bank, rubbed his red fingers together and said, “Excuse me money.”
His heart racing, Jeff hesitated, turned, and started off in a sprint. He had not made it five yards before he slipped in the mud and they were on him. They tackled him to the ground, kicked him in the knee and the groin, then raked his face against the stone walk. They turned him over so the memorial statue loomed above: the colonial Russian on horseback, waving his sword. The thick-necked man leaned over his face and pounded him with a fist, once against each eye. He pulled Jeff’s long hair, jerking his head back, while his friends tugged off his ski jacket, groping for the stack of bills in the inside pocket. They emptied his pants pockets as well; one of them shouted, “Traktorbek, speshi!” and their footsteps faded off into the park.
Jeff stood uneasily, drew on his torn jacket, then stumbled to the road. They had stolen his identification card and wallet, and he didn’t even have enough for the bus back to the village. He staggered through the park.
The young privatization of
ficial, standing alone outside the former hall of sports, spotted Jeff and gasped. “What has happened, Meester Hartig?”
“They took my money. Can you help me? Can you find me a police officer?” He touched a welt rising on his forehead and checked the blood caked on his fingers.
The official clicked his tongue. “I am not sure that is a good idea—it may have been the police. Here, my friend, come inside the bathroom, let us clean you off.” Bolot Ismailov led him to the old locker room, but the water was not running. He swiped at Jeff’s bloody face with a dirty rag, chafing the skin under his eyes. Jeff winced and told him he was making it worse. He said he simply wanted to get home and asked if Bolot could lend him the fare. The privatization officer insisted on driving him instead.
Along the road through the valley Bolot’s Lada seemed to nail each and every pothole. Jeff’s head pounded. Bolot inserted a cassette into the ancient stereo and a fuzzy version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller blared from a single speaker. Jeff passed out for the second half of the ride and came to only as they turned in at the village otovakzal. They sped by the sign for the cheese collective, and suddenly Bolot slowed the vehicle, turned down the music, and said, “I didn’t know there was a collective here.”
Jeff panicked, but bit his lip.
“That’s a cheese factory back there?” Bolot asked, craning his neck.
“No, there’s no collective. I teach at the Lenin School.”
“I saw the sign.”
“Well, there certainly is no cheese factory here. I . . . I should know. I have to travel to Kazakhstan to buy cheese if I want it.”
“Perhaps I’m wrong,” Bolot said and shrugged.
“Yes, I’m sure you were mistaken.”
“It’s happened before.”
Jeff directed him to Karl Marx Street, and when the Lada swerved to a halt in front of his fence, he thanked Bolot profusely for the ride and asked how he could repay him.
“It was no trouble,” Bolot said. He looked straight ahead, the slightest smile on his lips.
Nazira heard Baktigul scream, “Jeff agai!” and saw the foreigner stumble into the gate of their lighted courtyard. She and Lola quickly ran to him, grasped his arms, and escorted him inside the house to the couch.
Jeff was out of breath. “I need to talk to your father. Please get him.”
“Yes, yes, Jeff,” she said. “But first let us take care of you.” She ordered Baktigul to find their father and Lola to bring him water to clean the blood off his face. Nazira rubbed a spoonful of her homemade yogurt under his eyes, explaining it would act as a balm.
“Jeff, I am very embarrassed this has happened to you,” she said as she finished. She screwed the lid back onto the jar, then wiped a drop of excess yogurt off his upper beard. “You come to help, and do you see how our people repay you?”
As she and Lola adjusted some pillows behind his neck, she heard her father bang into the house. He appeared with a cold bottle of Chinese beer, which he ordered Nazira to hold against the swelling of one of Jeff’s cheekbones.
“Who?” her father thundered. “Who did this to you?”
“There were three of them, but I didn’t get a good look.”
Nazira pressed the beer bottle into his face, and Jeff winced. She had never seen him vulnerable and beaten down like this. Month by month he had been growing steadily more impressive in her estimation. To have given up the comforts of America! To have volunteered to help in the struggles of their new nation! He had brought with him the knowledge of the West—New York, California, Washington—places where real history happened. He had brought the outside world in and opened their eyes. For this fact alone he seemed more durable, more vital, than anyone she knew. An American’s life, she thought, was of more consequence than their own small village lives.
Jeff was shifting out of her grasp. “I’m fine. Just forget it,” he said. “Forget it ever happened.”
“That is best,” Nazira whispered in English. “That is what I always do.”
Jeff turned to her father and spoke in Russian: “Anarbek, I have something to say.”
“What is it? What has happened?”
“The factory. I think they might know.”
II
4
THREE DAYS BEFORE Adam left for university, everyone was home except his father, and they had no idea where he’d gone. His mom had on her purple camp dress with wide white trim and long open sleeves. She was beading jewelry on the opposite end of the couch from her sister, her swollen fingers racing with the precision of a spider’s legs. Aunt Marie Anne sat straight up, intent on a word search in the Apache Scout.
A basketball game blared from the television. Sitting next to Adam on the floor, Verdena crushed an empty beer can with her heel, then straightened it, then crushed it again. “Where’s Dad?” she called. The noise bothered Adam—he couldn’t hear the game—but it did not bother his mother. The winter he’d been born, Lorena had grown feverish in the cold, had battled a month-long pneumonia, and since then was slowly losing her hearing. Half-deaf, she relied on Marie Anne to keep her up to date with the world.
They watched the basketball game until their father came stomping through the back door. Marie Anne didn’t bother looking up from her word search.
Lorena said, “You been gone two days.”
“Home now,” Larson said, his back to her.
“Why don’t you just leave altogether?”
“I should,” he muttered. “Should.”
“You didn’t even leave us any—”
Larson faced her. “I’m home now! Just come back! Why don’t you let a person take his jacket off?”
“Don’t take it off. Get out.”
“Starting this again, Lorena.”
“You even smell like her. Go on, just get outta here. Go on back with her.”
“Say this in front of your own children?” He pointed at Adam and Verdena. Their father had the thickest arms Adam had ever seen.
“You don’t think they know? Wonder where they think you are?”
Adam left the house before it got worse. In the backyard he walked slowly past the swing set. The seesaw, slide, rings, and monkey bars all lay completely destroyed. His dad had bought the set for Verdena when she was eight, down at the Sears in Phoenix, and they had hauled it to the reservation in the pickup, the parts rattling in a box for four long hours. A month later, sleeping with their parents, Verdena had wet the bed, and their father got angry. In the middle of the night Larson went out and smashed the jungle gym. He tore off the pipes and beat the seesaw against the fence, bent it in two and toppled the whole thing, took a hatchet to the plastic seats, and then cursed at the stars until all the dogs of Red Cliff were wailing. Adam watched from the door with his mom, her arm draped around his shoulders. “It’s good,” she had whispered. “Let him do that.”
Outside now, Adam began to shoot baskets in the yard. He followed his old pattern: start from the laundry line and step farther back with each shot, until he was past the ruined swing set and had to heave the ball with a running start over the Joshua trees. He heard his dad get into the pickup, slam the door, and in a whirl of dust and exhaust pull off the property.
Before the dust had cleared, the truck reversed and squealed back up the dirt driveway. His father called in Apache, “Hey, we’re hunting in the morning. Tell your mom to make us food.”
“It’s not season yet,” Adam said.
“I’ll worry about that.”
Adam went in through the back kitchen door and found his mother trembling by the counter, covering her right eye. Aunt Marie Anne sat at the table shaking her head, and continued her word search.
Adam said, “He wants to hunt tomorrow.”
His mom nodded. He helped her find the ingredients, fry up the tortillas, and boil the eggs. She was going to make sandwiches but he told her, “Dad says not to bring meat with us hunting. Elk could smell the meat.”
She smiled and ran her hand over he
r lean face; her eyes grew moist. For the next two hours she and Marie Anne made the frybread. The kitchen warmed with steam. Adam helped them spread the beans, and together they wrapped the Apache burritos in foil. His aunt rubbed his mother’s hair and kissed her on the forehead, then looked down at Adam and said, “You’ll have lots of food.”
Before dawn he heard his dad come in through the dark, clomping around the house in his boots. He didn’t get up until he felt the warm hands shoving him.
“Hey, you got some whitetail to shoot.”
Adam rose and stretched his palms toward the woodstove next to his mattress. The fire had gone out, but the house was not too cold; he would let his mom light it.
Verdena got up too and joined them in the kitchen where their father was packing the food into the cooler. She watched for a minute as they got ready, but she was curled asleep, a pile of warmth, on Adam’s mattress by the time they left. Adam made sure the screen door didn’t slam and went out into the dim morning.
Uncle Sparky was waiting in the cab of the pickup. “Mr. University!” he shouted. They loaded the icebox and the packs of bullets and the 30-30 and the other rifles.
“Got Adam with us today,” Uncle Sparky said. “Always bring something home when he comes, isn’t it?”
“Kid’s good luck,” Larson said. “Get him an elk before he takes off on us.”
“We don’t miss nothing when Adam’s here.” Sparky squeezed the rim of Adam’s cap and turned it around backward as he always did, so Adam had to fix it.
His dad and uncle slammed the doors almost in unison, and he climbed into the bed of the pickup and sat facing the rear. His father drove west through the gray light, and beyond Indian Ruins the road became dirt; then at Iron Mine they crossed Canyon Creek and turned up a logging road toward Foot Canyon. Adam kept lookout from the bed of the truck. All the roads looked the same, but he could have negotiated the forest as well as his dad did.
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