He sat down next to Tsenten and asked Garash for a Coke. The manager looked sad too, and Markus felt uneasy.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, in his heavily accented Perso-Mongol.
Tsentsen nodded.
“Haven’t you heard the news?” he asked. “Or read the paper?”
Markus shook his head, toying with the soda bottle in front of him.
“Here,” Garash said, handing him a folded paper.
“You know I don’t read Perso-Mongol that well,” Markus warned.
“It’s the one for the Elenis.”
Markus looked at the front page. It was a special issue of the English-speaking paper of Samarqand, The Samarqand Gazette. A black and white portrait of a man in local costume occupied half the page. Although the picture quality wasn’t great, he recognized Ole’s round and jovial face, smiling at the camera, looking happy and confident. Above him, printed in large deep black letters, was the headline:
NATIONAL POET OLGEŸ TAZAR MURDERED.
“This is a terrible day,” Tsentsen whispered. “I am not sure we should open the bar. There might be trouble.”
He raised his head and glanced at Garash, who just shrugged.
“Angry people won’t come here,” Garash said. “Angry people will attack public buildings in the New Town.”
“I hope you’re right,” Tsentsen said gloomily. “If you’re wrong, you’ll have to find yourself another job. Actually, we’ll all have to find ourselves new jobs.”
They laughed half-heartedly. Markus put down the paper. He wanted to know. He had to know.
“That man, Tazar, he was really famous?”
Tsentsen raised his eyes to the ceiling and shrugged.
“You have no idea. It’s like your . . . your Shakespeare here, if Shakespeare had written poetry. The greatest. National pride.”
Synth created Ole’s silhouette sitting at the bar next to him, the eternal beer nursed between his hands. His black suit, black cap, red tie, making him look like an angry worker going to a May Day party . . . A new wave of sadness overwhelmed Markus, and the bitterness of salt water and seaweed filled his mouth.
“But why would anybody murder him? Was it a madman?”
“Was it a madman? You hear that, Garash? Pure Shakespeare. No, my friend, it wasn’t a madman. If only it had been a madman . . . It’s worse, much worse. It’s politics.”
Tsentsen looked around the empty bar with his paranoid eyes.
“The king,” he resumed in a whisper, “is getting old. Too old, maybe. Who am I to judge? In any case, the Western Alliance is pushing hard to destabilize Samarqand. Because of our past support for the Chinese Confederacy, they hold a grudge against us. And they are very interested in our gas fields . . . The king knows that and has promised more democracy, but, of course, the first elections were rigged and some people became unhappy. Very unhappy. Then there was the international bad publicity. So there have been problems here ever since. And the Western Alliance is trying to find a pretext to strangle us for good.”
“But where does Tazar fit in? He was a poet, no?”
“He was more than a poet. He was a symbol. His feet were in this city, but his head touched the stars.”
Markus saw Ole’s body suddenly adopt gigantic proportions within the walls of the café, lifting everything with his huge shoulders, the upstairs apartment, the roof, but destroying nothing, as if he was made of gentle, cool air.
“And he wasn’t even from Samarqand,” Garesh added, putting his drying cloth aside. “He was an Eleni, like you.”
“Really?”
Markus feigned surprise, but he heard an unconvincing tone in his voice that made him cringe. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice.
Garesh and Tsentsen nodded in unison.
“I don’t know where he came from—some big city of the West, Babylon, St. Petersburg, one of those. He just showed up one day and became one of us,” Garesh explained.
“More than one of us,” Tsentsen interrupted. “He became our national poet, the beautiful voice of our city, Samarqand!”
They raised their glasses and Markus raised his Coke.
“To the immortal voice of poetry!” Tsentsen said, ecstatically.
“To the immortal voice of Samarqand!” Garesh added, his eyes moist with tears.
To my good old friend, crazy Ole, Markus thought, but he said nothing and took a sip of his funerary Coke as his companions sipped their beer.
Seventeen.
On his way home Inspector-General Ali Shakr Bassam stopped at the newsstand at the corner of his street and bought a paper. He looked at the picture of his favorite poet and shook his head. The news-vendor noticed his gesture and nodded sadly, as he handed him his change.
Shakr was happy to see that the press had been so diligent. All the papers had run special editions. He had made his phone calls from the police station’s cafeteria at ten, right after his conversation with Sekmet. If Bureau 23 wanted to put a lid on the case, well, fuck them. Fuck them totally. Poetry was truth. Poetry was invincible.
Dissonances
Eighteen.
The man was drunk and had an annoying smile. An Eleni, Markus thought, just like me.
Oh no, not like you, precious. Many Elenis have come here and were nothing like you . . . Do not worry, you are one, child. One and only. I remember you well. I keep on remembering you, although your steps led you away a long time ago. The dust of the streets here remembers. It never forgets a single footprint. Ever.
That voice. Synth as a woman. What now? No panic. Frightened curiosity, more like it. The drunken man repeated something, with an expansive gesture of his arm.
“Sorry, what?” Markus said, trying to distinguish words from the slurring.
Of course, the background music and the loud voices of the surrounding conversations didn’t help.
Music helps, sometimes. It helped you. That’s why you came back. You remembered.
“’Nother round,” the man said, smiling again.
“Sure!”
Markus produced four bottles of Gengis Khan, the local beer.
“Hey, where you from?” the fat guy asked, producing banknotes.
Markus slammed the change on the counter. The stranger didn’t pick it up. At least, the tip was good.
“Where you from?” he asked again.
“Petersburg,” Markus lied.
“Oh yeah? We’re from New Babylon, my team and I. Like it here?”
The man waved vaguely.
Across the room, Markus saw a group of four or five people sitting around a table. Elenis, all of them. He shrugged.
“It’s alright.”
“I’m sure it is, I’m sure it is . . .” the man said, nodding as though he was actually doubting his own words. “We just arrived today and we saw some demonstrations. Near our hotel. Pretty violent too. You know what’s going on?”
“A famous poet was murdered. People are pissed off.”
“Famous poet? Never heard of him where I come from.”
The man grabbed the four beers and moved away to his table.
Asshole, Markus thought, pocketing the tip. Another customer squeezed to the bar and ordered a Chinese whisky.
Nineteen.
“You’re not eating your dinner?”
Rezida’s voice sparkled through Inspector-General Ali Shakr Bassam’s consciousness like light reflected by an opening window. He winced involuntarily, as if the words had somehow blinded him.
They were eating in the little kitchen, as usual, just the two of them under the harsh light-bulb—Amir, their son, was away at university, enjoying his student life and newfound freedom. At least, that was what he was supposed to be doing, although Bassam had always secretly regretted that his son was such a nice guy, quiet and gentle, not so much a nerd in the Western TV series sense, but more the sensitive, brooding type. Amir had enjoyed reading and counting as a child and, if he didn’t mind playing football in the yard with the other
kids, he also liked to watch documentaries and play alone in his room. His long eyelashes attracted the girls and he was everybody’s friend—the perfect son, in a way, but the inspector-general had hoped he would be somehow wilder. A strange desire for a policeman, he admitted, but that was the truth.
Bassam looked at the delicious fish his wife had prepared and felt his stomach grumble. Sadness had made him forget he was hungry. Olgeÿ Tazar’s funeral was scheduled for tomorrow. More sadness. Riots, perhaps.
“Yes, yes, I’m eating,” he said, lifting his fork.
Rezida clicked her tongue.
“Will you tell your wife what’s bothering you? Twenty years we are married, I know my husband.”
Bassam smiled. She did know him, maybe even better than he knew himself. She had a keen eye, and none of his little mannerisms escaped her notice.
“I’m thinking about Olgeÿ Tazar. I can’t believe the case went to Sekmet and Bureau 23. It should be mine. And it’s the funeral tomorrow . . .”
Rezida gently put her hand over his on the reddish-pink, floral plastic tablecloth. Her wedding-ring shone under the light.
“I’m afraid of riots. I understand the anger, but violence is not the solution. Not in this case,” he resumed, still staring at her fingers.
“The broken window, the broken door can be replaced . . .” Rezida quoted. “But nothing can replace my broken heart.”
Tazar’s Ode to a Broken Window. Every citizen in Samarqand knew it, especially since Hataman had put it to music.
“I need to find the bastards who did this,” Bassam said. “I owe it to this city.”
“Do what you think is best,” Rezida said calmly. “But don’t bring down the roof of your own house. And eat your dinner.”
Twenty.
The group of Elenis were the last ones in the bar, two young guys, the drunk middle-aged idiot and a woman whose age was hard to guess, sitting at their table covered with empty Gengis Khan bottles, talking noisily about whatever they were talking about. Markus finished cleaning the other tables, holding empty glasses with the fingers of both hands, like a Norman Rockwell milkman. Tsentsen took the glasses from his hands and put them in the dishwashing machine.
“I’m going home. You can close when they’re gone, or you can make them leave and then close.”
Garesh had left earlier. It had been rather a slow night—people fearing the violence in the New City would spread to the old district. They had been wrong, but apparently no one had bothered to tell them. Like everywhere else, news channels always focused on the spectacular and left the reality out. The good thing was that Markus’ Perso-Mongol was too limited to understand the garbage that went with the images.
“Hey, come here!” the idiot shouted at him. “Let us buy you a beer!”
Markus felt like declining the invitation, then thought what the hell and grabbed himself a Khan. He lifted it to toast with the group, but they waved at him to join them.
Tomorrow was Ole’s funeral. A hangover could be a good thing.
He took a chair and sat next to a younger guy, who had thick black glasses, thinning blond hair and a scribbled goatee.
The idiot raised his bottle.
“Cheers, friend. What is your name?”
“Mathias,” Markus answered, without asking their names.
“We’re here on an historical mission,” the idiot resumed. “You might have seen us on TV. The show is called Archeology Action.”
The other three nodded, staring at Markus intensely with booze-soaked eyes.
“Oh yeah?” Markus carefully answered. “I don’t have a TV.”
They stared at each other in disbelief. The woman shrugged. She had a thin featured face, black eyes, no makeup, longish black hair and a long, thin mouth that didn’t smile a lot. Her eyes glowed softly once in a while, hinting at the possibility of great beauty. They reminded Markus of tiny obsidian Aztec mirrors.
“I have the show on DVD somewhere. I’ll bring it to you next time. Anyway, you know why we’re here?”
Markus shook his head.
“Try to guess,” the idiot taunted him.
“I don’t know . . . black ops?”
He saw the smile on the idiot’s face freeze for a split second and then his eyes refocused, making Markus wonder if he was really so drunk after all.
“Black ops! You hear that, guys?”
They laughed in unison. It sounded genuine.
“That’s what they thought at the Embassy too, and at customs . . . They kept us hours at the airport . . . We’re still waiting for some of our gear,” the other guy—same age as the one with glasses, but with dark hair parted on the left and bluish cheeks eaten by acne—said.
The older idiot shook his head and rested his Khan on the table.
“No, try again.”
“No idea!”
Markus didn’t feel like playing. He was tired and longed for his bed. His soul felt like melted rubber. He could almost smell it too.
“Alexander,” the idiot said, eyes shining.
“Alexander?”
The idiot nodded.
“Alexander the Great. His tomb. We think we might have found it. Finally.”
“Congratulations.”
Markus raised his bottle again and they all enthusiastically followed suit. The idiot went on explaining that Alexander’s tomb had never been found. He’d died in Babylon, been buried in Alexandria, and then, around 400 AD, his tomb had completely disappeared. But the idiot had traced it through newly discovered Chinese, Mongol, Persian and Indian documents . . . It was here, somewhere.
“We heard of a complex of ancient caves, in the mountains. Man-made, supposedly. As soon as our gear is cleared, we’re on it. Wish us good luck.”
Markus wished them all the luck in the world and told them he was closing.
Twenty One.
The music from the Indian-built portable stereo flowed softly in the darkness. Eyes open, staring at the omega gray ceiling, eyes open, thinking, Markus. Puzzles, chunks of huge icebergs drifting on a dark sea, lights reflected in a rainy train window, blurred collisions, Mathias.
Yes?
Who am I?
Can you reformulate the question?
Who am I?
That is the same question.
To live is to be coinciding exactly in time and space. Perfect coordinates. Synth created a diagram. He was X. He was living. That was clear enough. But for what purpose? As Camus put it, Sisyphus was happy pushing his rock up the hill because it gave him a purpose and a meaning to his rebellion.
Why am I here?
To hide.
And . . . ?
Can you reformulate the question?
What am I here for?
To live.
What do you mean by “to live”?
Static. The sound of a nail scratching skin.
What do you mean by “to live”?
Synth created a blinding sun and the smell of warm stones. Markus adjusted the light and took in the smell, he warmed to the elements of nature.
The question remained unanswered.
Twenty Two.
On television:
A thick crowd, clad in white, follows a dirty-white pick-up truck. A body wrapped in white linen lies in the back. The crowd is chanting funeral songs. Some women are beating their chests, men are either shouting, singing or crying silently. The streets of old Samarqand are filled with this white cloth snake, inching its way past the closed shops. A reporter comments on the scene, while the cameras zoom in on the security forces escorting the funeral procession. One man is standing out in the whiteness, although his hair is blond. He is an Eleni and he is dressed in black. But no one seems to notice.
The Sound of One Hand Clapping
Twenty Three.
On television:
Tazar’s widow was interviewed at her home by the national channel. Ali Shakr Bassam stopped adjusting his tie in front of the large flat screen. Of course, the widow. Ma
ybe she knew something. She probably knew something. He mentally registered her name—Faiza Tazar. A serious looking young woman in traditional Perso-Mongol clothes, dark circles under her eyes suggesting sorrow—but her deep black eyes showed anger. Cold anger. Behind her, a color photograph of the Poet, on a shelf, a white scarf placed over it. He would go and talk to her. Sekmet would be mad if he learned about that—perhaps he would even threaten him. It was highly illegal to work on a case that was in the hands of Bureau 23. But a Poet had been killed, and when one was working on the death of a Poet, rules didn’t apply any more. Ali Shakr Bassam shut down the TV, went into the kitchen to kiss his wife and closed the door of his flat behind him. A new day’s work awaited him—a new day of uncertainty and revengeful rage.
Twenty Four.
The girl was waiting at the bus stop. As in any cheap sentimental novel, Markus’ heart skipped a beat. Although the feeling wasn’t new—his heart had skipped a beat for many girls before—the precise familiarity of the feeling made him feel awkward—out of place, to be precise. It made his surroundings suddenly appear more exotic than they used to be—or rather it brought back their exoticism in a second—an impression that had faded after months of living here. The colors seemed brighter, the smells more pungent, the sounds more deafening, his freedom more vulnerable, the words more . . . ah, the words . . . The words, they were actually . . . gone. Not only his poor Perso-Mongol vocabulary, but everything had been wiped out for a fraction of a second. A tiny electric shock and his brain had completely disconnected his language functions. Synth graciously offered him a dictionary, but Markus shrugged it off. He liked the feeling of the tabula rasa. The bus arrived. The girl climbed in. He followed her, speechless, but not eyeless.
Twenty Five.
The Song of Synth Page 12