Days in the Caucasus

by Banine

  Now is the time to talk about Jamil, whom I should have introduced a long time ago; I avoided doing so because I find it so unpleasant.

  Jamil was one of the many suitors spurned by my older sisters. Since we got back from the country, he had been working to secure my father’s release. He was making a meal of it, clearly trying to please my family, and me in particular, now that I was a marriage prospect. Two sisters had rejected him, but the third might accept him, especially out of gratitude.

  I loathed Jamil and found him repulsive. Was he really? He was medium height, had a good figure and took care of his appearance, aiming for an elegant look, which he carried off to some extent. I disliked everything about him from head to toe: his red hair, which was rare in the Caucasus and viewed with suspicion; his thick eyebrows above his malicious little eyes (had I been in love with him, I would certainly have found them intelligent); his unusually long nose; his mouth and the grating voice that came out of it (a wooden wheel climbing a hard rock).

  He talked a lot with a profusion of gestures; he always had a great deal to say, as he was beset by excessive intellectual pretensions. He belonged to the group of Baku’s brilliant young men who were almost this or almost that; he was ‘almost’ an engineer. He had studied in Liège for several years but not graduated. He returned equipped with some knowledge of the French language, and a Belgian mistress with whom he cohabited for several years, gaining himself in the process a reputation for perversity.

  Jamil’s fortune was modest on the scale of Baku millionaires; nonetheless, it allowed him to live a life of idleness and to devote himself to the favourite pastime of all Baku men—gambling.

  One of Jamil’s worst traits was his constant striving to be witty. Unfortunately one cannot display wit if one has none—and Jamil had none. He persisted though, even when he saw that his efforts had no effect—nothing discouraged him and he would always keep trying. He couldn’t possibly be wrong! After all, it was only his audience that suffered from his failures—he never did.

  As Jamil began to court me more openly—a direct result of his impending success in securing the release of my father—my revulsion for him only grew stronger. Did Jamil notice my antipathy? I answered him only reluctantly, hardly smiled at his supposed witticisms and during his visits my glum demeanour brightened only when he was about to leave.

  He came to see us regularly to keep us up to date with his initiatives; he was very optimistic, thanks to the intervention of a friend who was an important commissar. My anxiety grew alongside Jamil’s happiness. Though it tormented me, I came almost to fear my father’s release, as it now coincided in my mind with the marriage request that would automatically follow.

  I have said that I found Jamil repulsive in the extreme, and disliked both his attitude and his physique. His red hair was a major part of the problem. We attributed evil powers to this uncommon colour and it had become the stuff of legend. I had been especially affected by one of these tales, told one night by Grandmother. She said that in the olden days, hundreds of years ago, many redheads were born in a Persian village. All the families with a redheaded child suffered misfortune, which was soon attributed to the birth of these strangely coloured children. The redheads were thought to exert a malign influence and were blamed for everything that went wrong; they faced distrust and even revulsion from their own families. No one doubted their mysterious powers, their contact with the other world and their malevolent aura.

  An alchemist pondered this problem for many years until fate brought to his attention an old parchment of Egyptian origin and the scales fell from his eyes. After that, the redheads began to disappear one after the other. It wasn’t until the old alchemist’s death that people learnt the truth from his own manuscript. ‘Take a redhead and cut off his head,’ the manuscript began. ‘Then make incantations over it for several days, read verses from the Koran and recite magic spells.’ Then the alchemist boiled the head for a long time in a cauldron with herbs and various other ingredients. After that, he placed the head on a specially prepared board and waited… If the operation failed, the head would rot; if, on the other hand, the operation was a success, the head would begin to talk of the other world, of the past and the future. The alchemist had painstakingly noted down all that the heads of his many ‘patients’ had told him; and all their prophecies were proved right.

  In no time at all there wasn’t a single redhead left in the province, so the heads fetched fabulous prices, as everyone wanted to have this fascinating experience for themselves.

  Whenever I looked at Jamil, I imagined his boiled, bloodless head, eyes closed, talking about the other world, and I would be overcome with a terrible nausea. Oblivious to his effect on me, Jamil would continue his courting and his witticisms, all the while gesticulating wildly. I shuddered to think of myself in the same bed as him; my fertile imagination coupled with my knowledge of erotica painted scenes that filled me with disgust. Only by dreaming of Andrey, of Prince Andrey, could I escape these depressing images.

  * This is the way we referred to sharia in Azeri.

  6

  It wasn’t difficult to spread communist propaganda in Baku. Although it was one of the richest cities in the world, it had no public transport, no sewers or rubbish dump. The workers lived in filthy hovels, were paid a pittance and had no recourse against the rich. The story went that my Grandfather Musa one day received a petition from his workers, demanding soap, a wage increase and more humane treatment. ‘Grant them humane treatment,’ he decided. There was a flagrant imbalance between the wealth of Baku’s richer inhabitants and the poverty of the majority. The communists’ first act when they came to power was to build an electric tramway in record time. It was bright red, as a child born of the revolution should be, and its lights shone at night. During the first few days of this apparition’s arrival the populace would come out just to admire it. Other initiatives followed.

  The communists set up institutions to educate veiled women. They knew that, once touched by the graces of a new civilization, these women would themselves cast off the ancestral veil, which was so clearly out of place in a Soviet republic. One such institution they founded was the National Conservatoire for Muslim Women, where my oppressed sisters received their initiation into dancing, singing and music.

  One day I received a letter from the headmistress of this nascent institution, asking me to come and see her ‘on important business’. I was very surprised, but responded promptly, presenting myself at the appointed hour and day at the house of a former oil baron, which now served as the conservatoire. The headmistress was waiting for me.

  Zeynab Khanim was a singular person, whom I had already heard a lot about and wanted to meet. She was an educated Muslim and very musical. Her bad behaviour had always shocked the whole of Baku Islamic society, who considered her a prostitute and her husband a pimp. Unconcerned by this gossip, they continued their bohemian lives, he phlegmatic and easy-going, she wild and full of life. Striking, with a large sensual mouth and big round eyes, she wasn’t pretty, but she was something better—seductive.

  She fell on me as though I were her only hope (I learnt later that most of her letters had gone unanswered) and set out the situation.

  ‘You see, it’s marvellous to set up a conservatoire for Muslim women,’ she told me, ‘but one still has to find female teachers who are musical and know our language to boot. The vast majority of our pupils will be girls who wear the veil and speak only Azeri—in a word, backward’ (she gave a scornful shrug) ‘and this creates particular conditions. We need teachers like you. Oh, I know what you’re going to say…’ (she raised her hand to stop the words I had no intention of saying) ‘that you’re too young, that you won’t be able to teach, that you’re not musical enough. But I know what I want and I insist that you consider my offer. If you accept, you’ll not only get a rewarding job, you will also be doing good work.’

  I nervously asked what reward my position might bring.

 
‘Well, you will receive six hundred million roubles a month and every week you will get various foodstuffs: sugar, dried fruit, and so on, depending on what we are allocated.’

  I decided to accept, not so much for the foodstuffs and the six hundred million, which did not have a great deal of purchasing power, as to escape the idleness that weighed heavy on me; I was happy to have something to do, and what I was being offered seemed useful and potentially enjoyable. The headmistress beamed.

  ‘This is wonderful,’ she cried. ‘You’re the first person to accept, which will bring you luck.’

  We talked some more about the practicalities of my future employment and agreed that I would begin on the first day of the following month.

  Under the leadership of Zeynab Khanim, the most unconventional woman of my acquaintance, Baku’s National Conservatoire for Muslim Women became a quixotic, inefficient and pleasant institution. Organization was haphazard, improvisation was the order of the day by the grace of Allah, and it was all unexpected, charming and cheerful in the image of the headmistress herself.

  Having been promoted to teacher in defiance of common sense, I wondered anxiously how I would teach these young girls the principles of music; they were all from the working classes and did not know Russian, the language in which I had learnt these principles. Incapable of translating into Azeri what I knew of the mysteries of the piano, I gave up on theory and went straight into practice. I played a scale and told my poor pupils to do the same, without explanation. The black keys served as their reference points. These poor girls were both willing and talented and to my great delight were soon playing numerous scales with enthusiasm. My teaching method, which could be described as empirical, was working. In my naivety I imagined that when my pupils knew enough scales and arpeggios, I would be able to explain to them—by what mysterious method?—the correspondence between the sounds made by the piano and the small black symbols on the music paper.

  My patience did not always match my educational standards, alas. Sometimes a lack of self-control, typical of my young age, led to outbursts of swearing, of which I possessed an infinite and varied repertoire, thanks to my grandmother. I must have seemed formidable to my pupils, who were often much older than me, as I was inundated with presents; I would pretend to be offended as I received them, making the girls plead with me before I eventually accepted the gifts with an air of martyrdom. I found this childish charade very convenient and made constant use of it to protect my pride. So a rich harvest of good things rained down on me, the chosen one: sometimes an apple, sometimes cubes of precious sugar wrapped up in newspaper for want of anything else, sometimes smoked fish or biscuits.

  Occasionally I came to work in an unsettled mood, wanting to do anything but teach; I would say as much to Zeynab Khanim, who promptly told me to send the pupils away until later in the day. Then she would take me to her apartment on the top floor of the house and we would make tea, chat and play piano duets. Her husband would often join us; he was a plump, easy-going man whose calm temperament was diametrically opposed to Zeynab Khanim’s fiery character. Other men came too, a lot of other men, who all courted his wife, some more intently than others. During this time the Azerbaijani National Conservatoire for Muslim Women limped along; the teachers did what they wanted, the pupils too, and all was for the worst and the best in the worst and the best of all possible worlds.

  One morning when I arrived at the Conservatoire to practise my profession, I found Zeynab Khanim dishevelled, excited, enthused and flushed. Not without reason: the ANCMW was to receive a visit from the Commissar for Public Education and several other dignitaries. They wanted to hear and see at first hand the state of artistic education for Muslim women, who had until then been nourished on opium, that is to say, religion.

  Zeynab Khanim was ecstatic: ‘What an honour, what a great honour! We must be worthy of it. Come with me…’

  She took me up to her apartment, where with the help of her husband and another teacher we drew up a battle plan: we had to win the commissar’s heart.

  First of all, workmen were hastily summoned to build a stage in the large rehearsal hall, so all day long the knocking of hammers merged with the pupils’ not always pleasant music-making. The girls were reviewed by Zeynab Khanim, who chose the best to perform pieces calculated to charm the visitors. They rehearsed zealously all week. When the big day arrived, the desired effect had been achieved and the hall had an undeniably festive air. The bust of the grandfather of communism, Karl Marx (whom I irreverently called Marl Karx when I was feeling cheerful) reigned from a pedestal; he was flanked by the busts of Lenin, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, all placed on lower tables. They were almost invisible under an avalanche of coloured paper garlands, which were looped from one bust to the next, bringing them all together into a rather touching group. Red flags decorated the walls, which were lined by a forest of wilting potted palm trees. A concert piano stood on the just-finished stage, decorated with magnificent carpets requisitioned for the occasion. When the dignitaries arrived, I was to welcome them by playing ‘The Internationale’ on this piano.

  We waited; the pupils, most of them veiled, formed a group on one side of the hall; the headmistress and the teachers were on the lookout at the windows and my good self was at the piano. Beneath the busts of the doyens of communism, the golden chairs, upholstered in red velvet, waited with us. We held our breath the better to hear the sounds that would herald the visit. At last we heard cars stopping outside the house. Making little cries of panic, Zeynab Khanim charged down the stairs at a prodigious speed; a few moments later, the dignitaries entered the hall and I attacked the anthem of the Third International with all the vigour my feeble hands could muster. When I had finished, I got up, casting a curious, hesitant glance at the visitors sitting in the red plush chairs; my heart missed a beat and I couldn’t breathe… Prince Andrey was there, sitting to the left of the commissar. Panic-stricken, I rushed towards the group of pupils and went as close to the back as possible.

  The programme designed to win the commissar’s heart had begun; the pupils sang, danced and played on the carpeted stage. But I had eyes only for Prince Andrey, who was sitting comfortably in his chair and watching the show, his serious expression occasionally tempered by a shadow of irony. Happy to have found him, I was already upset at the thought of losing him again so soon. Chance had brought him here, while destiny would nullify the effect! I was horrified to think that Andrey would soon see me on stage again, where I was to play the last item in the programme, a bravura piece. Would he recognize me? I had spent two hours with him on the rock in the vineyard, when he had hardly looked at me and spoken all of two words to me. What would he remember of a dull young girl, only just fourteen? I looked at my reflection in a mirror opposite and found myself ugly, but especially young, horribly, desperately young. How could I hope that a man of twenty-five, a hero, a member of the revolutionary committee, would pay me the slightest attention? I abandoned all hope, indulging myself in absolute, sorrowful admiration for the black knight. Yes, Andrey Massarin was still wearing his black uniform, which distinguished him even more from the civilians around him.

  The pupils worked their way through the programme. I was aware of the passing of time, bringing closer the moment when I would climb on stage. I was horrified all over again, but at the same time ecstatic that Andrey would see me.

  My turn came to go on stage. When embarrassment reaches a certain point, it feels like drunkenness; I thought I was staggering and could see double, while bells were ringing in my ears. I managed to climb onto the stage and settle myself on the stool. I was to play Liszt’s arrangement of Verdi’s Rigoletto. While the musical merit of the piece is debatable, it does have an impressive number of notes and distance to cover on the piano in a minimum of time. I played the first chord and the others followed of their own volition, emerging as if by a miracle from my damp, trembling hands. I watched them as though they were not part of me, thinking they could carry
on or stop as they wished. But the gods of music guided them, and quivering jelly though they were, they continued to do their job. My fingers raced along at the speed required by Liszt, so well that at a particularly lively moment in my playing, the Commissar for Public Education inclined towards Zeynab Khanim, who was sitting next to him, and said with admiration, from the bottom of his commissar’s heart, ‘How well she plays! From one end of the keyboard to the other! So quickly and without stopping!’

  I reached the final note without mishap, to my great relief and to the satisfaction of the entire conservatoire and of the commissar, who wanted to express it to me personally. Zeynab Khanim took me by the hand and led me to his group. Then I noticed that the commissar had only one eye. While he expressed the hope that I would become a great artiste to the glory of our country, his single eye looked kindly at me. But I couldn’t properly hear what he was saying, nor see very well either; it wasn’t the commissar whom my eyes were beholding but Andrey, though I wasn’t looking at him. Then I heard, ‘Hello, Miss Natasha.’

  ‘What do you mean, Miss Natasha?’ Zeynab Khanim asked in astonishment.

  ‘We understand one another, don’t we, Miss Natasha?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, turning white as a sheet, then bright red, feeling foolish and happy.

  I thought him more handsome than in all my dreams. His dry, vigorous face, serious when he stopped being ironic, was even better in reality because it was full of life—intelligent, active, virile life; the life of a man, of a real man, with all his responsibilities, his essential courage, his aura of heroism. I thought of Jamil and the possibility of becoming his wife, and I gave Andrey a smile of gratitude for illustrating so beautifully what I wanted from my dreams.