Asher stops a moment in his incremental escape of her company and looks directly at Rakhel for the first time in weeks. “You think I should expand the lands where we grow wheat?” he asks, amused.
“Yes. Purchase that valley near Gahvareh and plant more wheat.”
“Purchase that valley and plant more wheat?”
“Then, you can grow and sell more wheat.”
“Well, why not,” Asher says. He says good-bye to her and takes his leave. The following day, when he returns from the caravansary, he remembers her suggestion and smiles. That night he tells her, “It is a sound idea. To buy that valley and plant more wheat fields.”
Rakhel’s suggestion proves profitable, and when Asher tells her this, she begins a determined search for ways to counsel her husband on investing. At first she steals into Asher’s study and looks through all his books, but unable to read or understand his calculations, she abandons the venture. Instead she decides to listen closely to the men as they speak. She eavesdrops on visitors in the yard or in Asher’s study. She talks to peddlers about what they see in their routes from village to village. She even listens to the gossip of the visiting women about who has met hard times. Thus, she gathers information and sits alone in her room at night thinking and rethinking, shaping her argument for Asher. She arranges her requests in a fashion palpable to her husband’s ego, cautious of what she suggests and when. A Tabriz rug the Cohenzadehs need to sell, a ruby medallion worth tenfold of what they are asking. Then, after acquiring those jewels and antiques, she spends several nights listening to him talk to her of the market before she says, “What if we buy the lands east of Tofangchi, too?”
“I built his empire,” Rakhel told Mahboubeh as a child. “I made Asher Malacouti richer than rich.” Rakhel repeatedly recounted for Mahboubeh the story of how she first suggested the valley near Gahvareh. Mahboubeh remembers the jewels, the coins, the rugs, the vases Rakhel kept in her rooms, behind locked doors. Sometimes, she’d take Mahboubeh into one of those storerooms and show her an antique pendant, tell her its value, and the price she paid for it. In truth, the wealth belonged to Asher, but after his death, that wealth, the lands, and all those priceless antiques became their son’s inheritance, and since Yousseff was not yet married, Rakhel managed to gain even more control of what was bought and what was sold.
Then, Yousseff died. His children were still young when his heart gave out. The Kurds from the villages came for his funeral the way they had for Asher’s death, and for Rebbe Yousseff’s, before him. They chanted and pounded their fists against their chests. Some even hit their backs with chains. And there was Rakhel, louder than any of them, weeping, and screaming and clawing her face. She’d pull out handfuls and handfuls of her hair. All day long, she’d shivan, until night came and she fell asleep from exhaustion. Then Mahboubeh took a broom and swept up her hair. Tufts of it, like small animals, on the floor. At sunrise, Rakhel started again. For months, she mourned him. Then she stopped crying when Yousseff’s young widow started to sell the antiques, one by one. And parcels of the lands, too. Rakhel took to yelling, then. Yelling and screaming up and down the street that Yousseff’s widow was a thief, selling her antiques, selling her melk. But all that wealth belonged to Yousseff’s boys by inheritance, and since they were still too young, his widow could do as she saw fit.
But before the loss of her melk, the act of advising her husband and helping him invest begins as Rakhel’s attempt to keep Asher in her room a bit longer, to win back his approval, to earn a place for herself in his home. She praises his profits, his acquisitions, lists for him how his wealth grows and grows. Sometimes, Asher pauses a moment and looks at Rakhel intently, as though looking at a new acquaintance, intrigued.
Regardless of Rakhel’s endeavors, however, Asher never returns to her room to spend an evening. After dinner, she sits beside her window, looking toward the light that escapes the curtained windows of the farthest room until it is snuffed out. In the mornings she rises early and looks out again to watch for Asher to leave. And it happens, often, for the morning to advance, sometimes approaching noon, before Asher steps out. By then, Rakhel has been working in the courtyard for hours, orchestrating more and more household projects that engage the maids to the brink of exhaustion. She labors, herself, alongside them. Asher walks past her, toward the stables, and nods a greeting in her direction. He leads his horse out without looking at her once.
Rakhel keeps her gaze down and busies herself with the task at hand so that the girls don’t see her hot shame. After he leaves, she turns to Zahra and Sadiqeh with a controlled fury, and explains how their work is inadequate, careless, unsatisfactory. It must be redone, with greater diligence and more speed. And the girls exchange a quick glance, a smirk, before continuing their work with exaggerated zeal until Rakhel leaves their company. Only then does she hear their hushed talking, their laughter. She imagines them aping her, and her face burns with rage. She walks faster, toward the well, thinking of other laborious projects for them to begin. She reaches the well, her hands trembling, and sits beside it, her back against the cool of its stones. She closes her eyes and sees Kokab’s face, perhaps just rising from sleep. She imagines Kokab’s thick hair disheveled, and the movement of her limbs across the bedclothes where the impression of Asher’s body still rests. Rakhel imagines how Kokab leans in to smell his scent on the pillow. How she rises from the tangle of the sheets and walks to open the window to allow for a breeze.
In the mornings, after Asher leaves Kokab for the whole of the long day within the household, she stares out of the window for hours. At the gray days, the steady rain, the shift of clouds, the sudden gold and the world illumined before dark clouds again, the white flash of lightning, the roll of thunder. She watches the birds come to settle on the naked branches that scratch at her window. She saves crumbs of bread from dinner in the pocket of her skirt, and leaves this small offering on the sill. She watches the birds look at the mound of crumbs skeptically, first with one eye, then another. And she watches the naked branches, scratching at her window, until she opens it one day to look closely at the small buds on the branches. She closes her eyes and pictures her daughter. The glow of her eager face in the mornings.
“Look at the branches, my love,” Kokab whispers. “They are not bare. The blossoms are simply waiting.” She thinks about her daughter’s dimpled hands. If she could hold those hands now . . . She throws her head back and a cry escapes her lips. She shuts her eyes tightly. If she could hold those hands now, she’d guide them along the branch, to the tips where the buds are still enclosed in their tight sheaths, the tree aching with the desire to push forth the petals.
“And afterward, those petals will come down on us like snow,” Kokab whispers. “And soon after, green leaves. So new, they’ll shimmer in the sunlight.”
Kokab catches a glimpse of herself reflected back in the glass, alone in the room, talking. She laughs. She raises her fingers to her cheeks. Tears, again. Endless. There is dust, too, she thinks. Dust that settles on the leaves. That dims their shine. And time dries them, breaks their bones. Burns them red, orange, gold. And winds that push them until they can’t hold any longer to the limb, relent. Let go their grasp. Float. Settle in puddles to be trampled by man and beast. She shakes her head. “Even in this, my love,” she whispers, “even in this a spectacular grace.”
Kokab waits through each passing day for the evenings. When the sun begins to set, she feels, despite herself, a flutter in the pit of her stomach. Soon she will hear the gentle rap of his fingers against the door. Each evening, Asher walks in and dispels the quiet birds of her sorrow. He fills the cold room with the warmth of his body. He asks her to stand in the candlelight, to stand naked and trembling, so that he can look upon her. And she stands for him. She stands for him in the golden flicker of that light, and she watches the shadows pass over his face. She watches him watch her with so much longing, the way she watches the sky, the moon, the rain. And in these moments of his ra
pture, she feels herself become tree, sky, moon, rain, the shift of clouds, the sudden gold, the illuminated earth.
Rakhel stands pressed against the garden wall. The night is moonless, and the stars litter the black sky. She shifts her bare feet in the wet grass. Across from Rakhel the willow tree hangs low to the ground, swaying each time there is a slight breeze. Beneath the tree rests the well. The shadows that lurk in the peripheries of Rakhel’s vision whisper to her, masking their voices as the sound of leaves. She hears a rustle come from the old walnut tree and she stands erect, the potential of motion pulsating in every muscle of her body. One more unknown sound in this darkness and she will lose her resolve, run back to her empty room and pray for forgiveness.
She takes a step forward, then two and approaches the well, her whole body shaking. She braces herself, tilts her head to the side to listen for footsteps, then she takes another step and listens again. Nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees. She places her hand on the low stone wall of the well and looks into the black emptiness of its opening.
“Can you hear me?” she asks. Her question rings down the well and multiplies itself indefinitely. She waits for a sign. The wind falls still. The leaves silence their whispering.
“Can you hear me?”
She brings her face closer to the opening, her question a response to her own question.
“You must eat the child that grows in her belly,” Rakhel says. She listens to her own voice travel, echo in the circular tunnel. “If she has a baby, I will lose everything,” Rakhel says.
Some bird of the night laughs from a nearby tree. Rakhel jumps back from the well and looks around frantically. She holds her breath, her heart lurching against her chest. She waits until the night resumes its silence, and turns back to the well.
“Kill the baby that grows in her belly, and give me a son,” Rakhel says. “No matter the cost. Give me a son.”
She breathes heavily, shuts her eyes, and reaches under her blouse to unfasten the rope about her waist. She shifts through the keys and finds the one that belonged to her mother. She slides it out and holds it between her fingers. She brings it to her lips and kisses it, then leans over the edge of the well. A thousand stars float around the dark shadow of her reflection in the still water. Rakhel opens her fingers and drops the key into the well. It breaks the surface of the water, shattering the night sky. The stars elongate and separate in the waves of Rakhel’s offering. When the water in the depth of the well is still again, she turns and walks back to her room. Once inside, her fingers are clumsy in lighting the lantern. She sits on the rug and takes a gold hand mirror, brings it to her face, and looks fiercely at the reflection of her own eyes.
Rakhel rises from the floor and opens the door leading into the breezeway. She walks beneath the picture of Moses striking his staff before the pharaoh and his court. The staff turns into a hundred snakes. She comes to the room at the end of the breezeway. A light escapes from the window between the slit of the drawn curtains. Rakhel presses her face to the glass and in the gold light of the room, she sees the naked back of her husband, sitting, and around his neck, Kokab’s long, white arms, spilling on his shoulders, the lush of her black hair. Rakhel watches the face of the woman in her husband’s arms. Kokab’s eyes remain closed, her lips apart. Rakhel watches Asher throw his head back, a look of pained agony on his face. She watches them become still. She waits for them to separate.
Rakhel wakes with a start. She sits up in her bed. It is not yet dawn. She hears a door open and shut. She listens to the footsteps in the courtyard. The splashing of water from the shallow pool. She rises from the bed and walks across the room to the window facing the courtyard. She pulls the curtains back slightly to see Khorsheed standing beside Ibrahim. Ibrahim motions for her to return to her room. Khorsheed leaves, reluctantly. The knot in Rakhel’s throat turns into a slow burning. These days, whenever Rakhel tries to speak to her, Khorsheed replies with cold, polite formalities.
“Damn you,” Rakhel says out loud. She raps her knuckles against the glass. “Damn you and your lack of loyalty.”
Another door opens and shuts. Rakhel hears the familiar footsteps on the marble stones of the breezeway. Asher walks across the courtyard to the stables. He does not look in the direction of her window. It is as if I have vanished, Rakhel thinks, that nothing of me remains, not even the room I inhabit. A few minutes later, he returns leading the horses. The two men each take the reins of a horse and walk out of the courtyard, through the narrow passage leading to the door that opens into the street.
The previous night, to disguise the strained silence of their dinner, Ibrahim told stories about the harvest in the villages. Rakhel tried to listen, but each time she started to see the fields of wheat and the men swinging sickles with sweat on their brows, she’d remember that Kokab sat directly across from her, and she knew that if she looked at Asher, she’d see him entranced by Kokab masticating.
The first few nights after Asher left her bed, Rakhel had sat down to the family meals resolved to stop eating and waste away. But when she noticed that nobody paid her slow death any heed, she developed a ravenous appetite. While Ibrahim spoke about the villages, Rakhel ate voraciously, smacking her lips, licking her fingers, leaning over to help herself to a second, a third helping.
“Even the women with new babies work,” Ibrahim said. “They leave the infants in the shade of a tree, work behind the men gathering wheat, and when it is time to nurse, they return to the shade.”
“What if wolves eat their baby?” Khorsheed asked.
“Wolves wouldn’t approach such a large group of people,” Ibrahim said. “Besides, Asher and I have seen these men wrestle. Each night, they hold contests. Should a wolf come, thirty men would fall upon the poor beast.”
Khorsheed giggled. Rakhel felt a wave of nausea and decided to conclude her meal noisily with a tall glass of water.
“The village heads host our stay. They spread the best of their bedding for us to sleep, and each night, their wives prepare stews with lamb meat. They do not eat so lavishly themselves. They slaughter a lamb when we arrive and treat the three days of our stay as a feast. It is a pity to miss it, this year. I feel terrible regret.” Ibrahim looked to his brother, but Asher did not notice, or perhaps even hear his brother.
“I wish I could go, just once,” Khorsheed said. “I’d leave the baby in the shade and try my hand at gathering.”
Rakhel snorted in response. Khorsheed paused and looked in her direction. Rakhel reached out to tear a piece of bread and soaked it in the pot of stew on the sofre, then stuffed it into her mouth. Then, she rose abruptly and gathered Khorsheed’s plate on top of her own.
“Rakhel, you seem to be in a bit of a hurry,” Zolekhah said. “We are still eating.”
“I’ll just take these,” Rakhel said and she left the room.
The sun crests over the mountains and the sky outside is pink and gold. It will be a warm day. Rakhel turns from the window and walks to the mirror. She stands before it and weaves her hair into two thick braids. She remembers the previous night at the well, her offering, her prayer. Something must change, now. She straightens her skirt and turns her thoughts to the day’s tasks.
The farmers brought in the grape harvest a week ago. If Rakhel waits any longer, mold will ruin the year’s wine. Rakhel saw to it throughout the week that the girls string up hundreds of clusters from the ceiling of the cellar. She stood in the dim light of the cellar to oversee their work. Zahra and Sadiqeh worked silently. When she addressed them, they responded with as few words as possible. Clean those bushels to make bottles of syrup. Yes, Rakhel Khanum. Extract the juice of the unripe ones and bottle that for stews and sherbets. Yes, Rakhel Khanum. Khorsheed avoids Rakhel, and Rakhel’s conversations with Zolekhah are sparse, so that some days the only sentence uttered by another in response to what she has said is yes, Rakhel Khanum. She spends days in this silence, under the hot sun, standing over the servant girls as they quietly burn the
grapevines and boil down the ashes, then boil the yellowish water to dip clusters in for raisins. There are still the bushels of rang-e kishmish-e siyah and methqali for wine making. We cannot do that, Rakhel Khanum. And Rakhel knows this, that it is blasphemous to their faith to make wine, but she says it regardless, asks them why not, drags reluctant words from them, pulls and tugs at the conversation to make it stretch until she knows it cannot go any further. Then she assigns them another task, and retreats to her room.
Rakhel must make the wine soon and she decides to do the arduous work alone. She brings up the buckets of grapes from the cellar one by one as the sun climbs to its zenith. She licks the salt of her own sweat from her upper lip. Her shirt sticks to the dampness of her body, the hair at the nape of her neck is wet. In the few moments of her rest, she feels the thud of the heart in her chest and the pulse of blood in her veins. Like the almost imperceptible motion of a fly’s wings, she thinks. So she works harder to keep from thinking.
If she had a child, Rakhel reasons, even a daughter, she might carry along with the rest of the world around her. That child, her child, will have another child, and another child will be born of that, so that through them, she might forgo such insignificance. But she has no child. She is the ending point of generations that stretch back to the beginning of time. She stops in the middle of the courtyard and places the buckets she carries on the ground. She looks up to the sun, dazzling white in the blue skies. Her eyes tear, but she keeps looking at the flaming disk.
“I will make things grow, the wealth of the estate, its abundance,” she says. “I will build a kingdom. At least this will remain of me, not the objects themselves, but the knowledge that I made them proffer. And the wine for the Sabbaths this year will be my own secret reminder, the product of my will and strength. It will be my hands that wash the grapes, my feet that press them, my diligence to nurse the fermenting liquid. I will funnel this wine of my labor into glass bottles to keep.”
The Girl from the Garden Page 15