Days in the Caucasus

by Banine

  2

  I was overjoyed to see them again! The gardeners were as busy as ever looking after them. They would soon leave, as our fortune had abandoned us. But while waiting for things to be decided, they stayed on, unpaid; they could still live off the estate. Free from anxiety about the revolution, the sheep thrived and potatoes grew in abundance. The air remained heavy with its usual fragrance; the scent of honeysuckle and the stronger scent of climbing jasmine perfumed the terraces, carrying into our rooms. Things remained as they always had been. That summer could have been any other summer—nothing seemed to have changed. The clear sky laughed at revolutions, beneath it the sea shone blue, while the earth was gracefully fecund. This contrast between the serenity of the world and our growing anxiety filled me with melancholy; it was poignant—and poignancy is what I began to feel, contemplating the eternal resurrection of nature compared to the brevity of our life.

  It was several years since the summer I had pictured my stepmother in Paris with Leyla. Now, I still pictured her in Paris but with my other sisters. They had sent us letters and photographs: they were elegant, happy and pleased with life. They lived in a large apartment on the Champs-Élysées, which they had rented from Gaby Deslys, a star of that era. Champs-Élysées! A name that overwhelms with longing those who are not there.

  I was idle from morning till night: my studies, which had been irregular at the best of times, were now abandoned completely. ‘At least revolution is good for something,’ I thought to myself with grim humour. Only the piano found favour with me from time to time. The rest of the time I strolled in the garden and read a little, but my main occupation was daydreaming, the daily bread of the dissatisfied. That summer I found a new place where I could give myself up to daydreaming in perfect peace. It was a rock inside the vineyard, bordered by poplars. No one ever went there and in the silence of the hot afternoons I could wallow in visions and sensations. I stretched out on the rough rock, facing the glittering sea. Behind me the poplars formed a solemn guard of honour, the wind playing in their branches. Sometimes clouds would blow lazily by, while the poplar leaves rustled more than ever. Fascinated, I followed the clouds’ progress with my eyes. They emerged from behind the horizon, passed over the sea, arrived above me and disappeared without trace behind the tops of the poplars. A blue sky appeared for their pleasure: a high sky, a pure sky, it spoke the solitary language of eternity. Seeing it so calm, so detached from the wandering clouds and the wandering humans with their miseries both great and small, I took it for eternity itself—a strange feeling that was sometimes so strong it made me weep.

  I was soon not to be so solitary. My cousin Gulnar and her mother arrived in the country; all the rest of the family had stayed in Turkestan for lack of transport. I was overjoyed to be reunited with Gulnar, as I had rarely seen her that winter. I was bound to her by old ties of friendship, a friendship mixed with admiration for her originality. Brazen, cynical, light-hearted and deeply immoral, Gulnar transported me to a world very different from my own, one that delighted and frightened me in equal measure. She was nearly sixteen and seemed to have the measure of life; her lively mind took surprising changes of direction for someone who was basically unpolished. Sensuality seemed to ooze from all her pores and determined her whole personality. She had a violent desire for men and despised them at the same time. Still inclined to fall in love, the more in love she was, the more she found reasons to despise the object of her passion; I think that she unwittingly hated whoever could subjugate her, albeit only for a while. It’s difficult to imagine quite how flirtatious she was; I think it must have been an effort for her not to flirt with her brothers and her father, the handsome Uncle Suleyman. Tall and slim, her body was very different from that of our compatriots, whose breasts and other protuberances expanded unreservedly in all directions. No sooner had her breasts begun to appear than she squashed them mercilessly in a brassiere of strong linen. Likewise, she squeezed her abdomen into punishing corsets. She could be proud of the results, and indeed she was, contemplating her reflection with satisfaction. She had velvet eyes and thick, sensual lips, which gave her a rather piquant, Negro look. As soon as she encountered a specimen of the male gender, she would turn her face towards him and fix him with a sultry gaze. Few could resist her charms and she had already had numerous affairs, which stopped, however, at what she boldly called ‘the gateway to paradise’.

  ‘You know,’ she explained to me in the manner of a businesswoman, ‘you have to keep your virginity for marriage, otherwise you might have problems. Afterwards, though…’ And she whistled. This whistle seemed to express her future full of lovers, adventures and passion. She already knew whom she would marry: a distant relative of her father’s, long since approved by the family, and who had long since been enamoured of my cousin: a good, weak man, whom the heavens seemed to have specially designed to be the ideal husband to fulfil Gulnar’s brilliant destiny. She was to marry him as soon as her family could return to Baku, and she hoped it would be autumn at the latest. ‘I can’t wait any longer,’ she would say languorously. And while waiting she used all the means available to satisfy her ardour. During the worst heat of summer, when everyone took a siesta, Gulnar sometimes took me to her shuttered room, where we would lie down on her bed, covered in a clean sheet. First, she would fall asleep like a child, surprisingly quickly, pressing the length of her brown, supple body against me, her head resting on mine. We were surrounded by the silence of a tropical afternoon, the only interruption a fly buzzing around the bed; furniture creaked; Gulnar moved slightly. As usual, sleep eluded me and I lay with my eyes wide open, waiting for my friend to wake up and the game that would follow. When Gulnar’s hand began to move, I knew that her nap was over. Her fingertips ran across my body, caressing me. According to the rules of the game, I had to repeat faithfully their movement on Gulnar’s body. It radiated with pleasure at my touch; her eyes closed, she rose a little and covered my face and neck with fervent kisses. She did not look at me and I was not allowed to speak; she was not looking at me, but through me at those men who would one day be hers. The game gave me no pleasure; I did it to satisfy Gulnar’s demands. Her authority over me was so great that I almost always did what she wanted.

  She was bored in the country, where the only men to seduce were the gardeners.

  ‘I’m bored, I’m bored,’ she repeated all day long.

  She shrugged her shoulders when I suggested she read or daydream or play music.

  ‘You get on my nerves,’ she would say impatiently. ‘Don’t you get it? I’m only interested in men.’

  So she was delighted when one day a ‘Commission for the Creation of Holiday Camps’ came to see us. It was an extraordinary event. Four men presented themselves at the gates of the property. When the gardeners asked what they wanted, they showed them their papers, which the illiterate gardeners were unable to read. After much mutual incomprehension, the gardeners ran to announce the visit to Grandmother, who at that precise moment was busy with one of her five daily prayers.

  ‘What do those Christian dogs want? To see the house? They can go to the Devil… See our house? Throw them out, the faithless infidels.’

  Scarlet with indignation, despite the presence of the Holy Book on the chair in front of her, she would not listen. We tried in vain to explain to her that it wasn’t a matter of giving consent, that the Russians were the masters now and could not be treated like dogs, while they, on the other hand, could treat us that way, should they so desire; she did not listen to us. While all these discussions were going on, the commission lost patience and entered the house on their own authority. Grandmother covered her face, but began to curse in our own language, which the visitors, all Russians, fortunately could not understand. There were four of them, handsome to varying degrees, but all men, and since they expressed the desire to see the house, Gulnar rushed to show it to them before anyone had time to stop her. Grandmother hurled ferocious curses in her direction, but it was too late; Guln
ar was already walking from room to room, the four men on her heels, paying far more attention to her than the house.

  ‘Little whore!’ shouted Grandmother, not mincing her words. ‘Just look at her—see how she’s wiggling her bottom like a monkey.’ Then she turned on her daughter: ‘It’s all your fault. You’re the one who’s brought her up so badly. Anyone would think you’re getting her ready for a brothel. And what do these men want anyway?’

  Our latest explanations did not meet with success either: she didn’t understand what a holiday camp was, nor what one could have to do with our estate. But we understood all too well: our house was just right for the commission’s plans and the visitors said that at least half of the rooms would be requisitioned for the holiday camp. They were very courteous, though, and the person who seemed most important told us we should be proud to take in men exhausted from their services to the revolution.

  ‘Why keep all these enormous rooms empty?’ he concluded with an oratorical flourish. ‘They will now provide shelter to men who come here in search of the peace and quiet of nature. In our noble cause the sacrifices of some become the good fortune of all.’

  With these words of comfort they left us, but Gulnar’s sighs followed them; she had certainly liked the tall blonde one with the small snub nose, who to us was utterly exotic.

  ‘What?’ yelled Grandmother. ‘Russians in my house? Men who eat pigs, get drunk and think they can do what they like? Here, in my own home? Are these the men who put my son in prison? Never. I would rather die.’

  There was no question of her dying, but only of giving in, since there was no way round it.

  The house was divided into two wings of equal size. We all moved into Grandmother’s wing, which consisted of ten rooms, so although we were together, we weren’t crammed in, especially since Leyla, whose husband had just been arrested too, left for Baku and didn’t come back. We each had our own room and I couldn’t help thinking that it was only fair to share such a spacious house with others. But I kept it to myself.

  A week later we watched a dozen revolutionary veterans arrive, all worn out to a greater or lesser extent by their exploits. There were old ideologists, accustomed to Siberian labour camps; schoolmistresses, whose eyes shone with communist faith; a Ukrainian poet who would recite poetry, then have a coughing fit; even a commissar’s wife, who had apparently come to rest from her husband’s exhaustion; and others whose faces and stories I have forgotten. Gulnar and I quickly got to know all these people. A few days later, we both fell in love with one of the old ideologists. When I say ‘old’, I’m talking from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old girl. Gregory Tarasov was a very youthful forty. He looked like a clean-shaven Turgenev, taught history in civilian life and lyrical communism all the time. Gulnar’s attractions forced him to forgive us our membership of the former oppressors’ class, a class to which we belonged without conviction anyway. He magnanimously overlooked this and endeavoured to enrich us with communist ideas. We weren’t hard to convince—the ground was fertile. Gulnar agreed out of flirtatiousness without really listening to Gregory; she gazed lustfully at the full, handsome lips, which parted to reveal a row of shining teeth. More aware, I enjoyed following the arguments that he passionately developed before us.

  ‘Don’t you feel the injustice of these vast fortunes that are the result of the chance discovery of oil?’

  We felt it.

  ‘Don’t you believe it was a flagrant injustice that millions were lost gambling in clubs, while workers died of hunger and cold in their hovels?’

  We most sincerely believed it.

  ‘And what do you think of those idle women whose only concern was to get dressed up; of those men whose interest went no further than the races, gambling and love affairs?’

  We honestly had nothing good to say of such people.

  He undertook our Marxist education. He did so well that, one month after his arrival, the hot blood of the newly converted coursed through our veins. Gregory looked at us tenderly, as a painter or sculptor looks at his creation, and continued his gentle moulding of our minds.

  One day he went to Baku and returned with two enamel brooches depicting Lenin, pinned them on our dresses and henceforth viewed us as his own creatures. I returned his kindness, even going so far as to take him to my corner reserved for dreaming, which he immediately adopted. Every afternoon the three of us went to lie down on the rough rock, which smelt of sun and dried grapes, and we talked of a thousand and one things. Gregory called us ‘his little orientals’ and talked to us about ourselves, himself and the revolution.

  ‘Almost all our great writers talked about the Caucasus,’ he said to us one day. ‘I have always dreamt of coming here; I’ve always dreamt of getting to know Caucasian girls, girls who are different from Russian girls, girls like you. You, Gulnar’—he leant over Gulnar, who was lying on her back, her hands crossed over her chest—‘are like a rather dangerous plant which produces beautiful flowers. But men are wary of it. They would like to touch it, would like to smell it because they know it has a marvellous perfume, but they are frightened, afraid of getting stung.’

  ‘Touch me,’ Gulnar said without a hint of a smile, ‘and you’ll see that I don’t sting.’

  For a long time Gregory considered her face, her eyes closed.

  ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he said at last. ‘If you really don’t sting, I would be in even more danger.’

  He turned towards me: ‘I am not so wary of you and my affection for you is greater. I would have liked to have a daughter like you, to make of her the woman I have always longed for in my heart: curious, idealistic, capable of sacrificing herself to a noble cause, artistic too. But I shall soon have to go and leave you both behind. It’s so sad.’

  ‘Oh no, don’t go,’ cried Gulnar, opening her eyes. ‘Why don’t you want to touch me?’ she asked passionately. ‘I don’t sting.’

  She took Gregory’s hand and put it on her neck. Gregory started to caress her there. I closed my eyes and didn’t open them until I heard Gregory say in a strangled, shaken voice, ‘Let’s go back. It’s late.’

  At other times he told us about his life, a classic revolutionary life, full of danger, trouble, drama. Twice he had been exiled to Siberia and twice he had escaped. He had taken part in assassination attempts against the state, had run an underground printing press, had lived in Geneva for two years and in Paris for one. Both his wife and son had died of typhus. ‘You can see that my life is hardly a round of pleasure. And you can see that I deserve this rest the party has granted me. Do the little orientals think so?’

  Yes, the little orientals did think so. They were beginning to see that revolutionaries were not all monsters and that capitalism had its drawbacks. I found incomprehensible my family’s stubborn blindness to the social change under way in the world. They thought they had a monopoly on stability and affluence, and were outraged when they were to be given to others too. The worker was created to work, the family for pleasure. That was their credo and anything else seemed heresy.

  Gregory was not the only one to feel affection for the little orientals. Almost everyone at the camp was well disposed towards us. To these true Russians from the north, the Caucasus represented, let’s say, what Morocco must represent for the metropolitan French: an exotic, far-off, rather mysterious country. Russian poets had celebrated the Caucasus, its women, its mountains, its foreignness. It was imbued with a specific emotion that almost every sensitive Russian felt when he got there. To these visitors we were ‘gazelles with languorous eyes’, ‘girls from the harem’, scarcely liberated from servitude: the ‘little savages’ of exotic novels.

  Everyone spoilt us too, and Gulnar and I welcomed the arrival of this holiday camp, as it brought a pleasant change to our slightly reclusive lives. My aunt, grandmother and Fräulein Anna admonished us, forbidding us to see ‘those people’ and threatening to punish us and tell our fathers, but in vain, as nothing could stop us. Our fathers were a long way
away, and we weren’t afraid of the other punishments. The portrait of Lenin continued to adorn our young chests. Now we swore only by Karl Marx and his historical materialism. Gregory’s influence was augmented by the arrival of a teacher. She too had given herself body and soul to the revolution, which she spoke of in maternal tones as though she were talking about her daughter. ‘She’s very well,’ she would say happily. ‘She has grown stronger; she will develop now and become robust. We must help her to flourish.’

  She gave us details of workers’ lives under the old regime, and we were filled with disgust at those who had exploited them so despicably. That is what she wanted. ‘You have to support us with all your heart. We must show the triumph of communist ideas even in society’s most hostile classes.’ ‘Society’s most hostile classes’ were enthusiastic in their agreement.

  She was the daughter of minor landowners near Kiev. From adolescence, an obscure, but irresistible force had pushed her towards the people. She became a schoolteacher, joined the Communist Party and left for a destiny where her personal well-being counted for nought. She was immersed in idealism, as though in a health-giving bath. It was of no concern to her what she ate, what was poured into her glass, what she wore—all that mattered, that gave her life meaning, was the revolution and its success. Petite, slim and vivacious, she never stopped turning over socialist ideas in her head, reading or learning in some other manner. She did not daydream and did not understand when I explained to her what daydreaming meant to me.

  ‘Daydreaming? But what about? Life is so exciting, a hundred times more exciting than the most audacious daydream.’

  ‘But daydreaming allows you to be something other than yourself, your only self,’ I tried to explain to her.

  ‘Why be anything other than my own self? I’m happy with my life.’

  That summed it up—happy with her life. Why would she want to change it? She also said to me, ‘If you take action, you won’t want to daydream. Try it and see.’