Days in the Caucasus

by Banine

  Since the ceremony had gone well, Zeynab Khanim’s complexion had regained its natural colour and the atmosphere became calmer. She led the commissar and his entourage to the dining room where the pupils were serving tea. With her infallible instinct for matters of the heart, Zeynab Khanim unerringly sat me next to Andrey.

  ‘So, you have left the countryside?’ he asked. ‘Where is Gulnar, the ravishing Gulnar? Do you know that Gregory talks about her in all his letters to me? He is in love with her, very deeply I think.’

  I told him that she was married to a good man and seemed happy.

  ‘I would be glad to see you both. Do you think your social mores as they are in their current state would let you come and see me?’ He gave a mocking smile. ‘It would give me pleasure, great pleasure.’

  He looked steadily at me. Feeling sillier than a goose and dumber than a cow, I lowered my gaze and stammered something that had neither sense nor ending.

  ‘I can see you’re shy. You’re still at the age to play with dolls really.’

  Pride made me forget my shyness: ‘I’ve never liked playing with dolls. And I’ll be getting married this year.’

  ‘And that makes you proud and happy?’

  I didn’t answer, and Andrey said, ‘In case you decide to come and see me, on your own or with Gulnar, I live at Number 14, Pushkin Street, and my telephone number is 31-34. Can you remember that?’

  ‘You live at 14 Pushkin Street? Definitely Number 14?’

  ‘Yes—is it really so extraordinary to live at 14 Pushkin Street?’

  ‘Yes, it is to me. It’s my childhood home. That’s where I learnt to walk, to talk, to play the piano and to read.’

  ‘Really? That is funny,’ Andrey said, ‘but you know I don’t believe in omens. Anyway, this coincidence should persuade you to come and see me. Would you like to?’

  He smiled without any hint of irony and a different man was before me. I thought I could read interest in his eyes; but I knew the power of my imagination and did not trust my impressions. False though they may have been, they nonetheless enabled me to overcome my shyness, and I began to talk intelligibly at last. Yes, I told Andrey, I would come and see him, preferably with Gulnar.

  ‘You’re afraid to go alone to visit a man, a member of the revolutionary committee at that. Brr!’ He pretended to shudder.

  ‘I know Gulnar will agree to come with me, but we might not be able to manage it in the next few days.’

  ‘Tell her I live with a charming friend who loves to flirt with women. If my memory serves me right, this argument will sway her decision.’

  Tea flowed freely and, nonsensical though it may seem, intoxicated the guests, who became more and more voluble. Eventually the commissar rose with the clear intention of proposing a toast, gesturing as though to raise his teacup like a champagne glass. However, he stopped himself just in time, going on to deliver a speech liberally punctuated with the word hope—a sentiment the commissar seemed to cherish—and with verbs in the future tense: ‘We will sow, we will build, we will create, we will harvest…’

  7

  A harsh winter looked set to echo the harsh political climate. The wind, which regularly swept through Baku’s streets in all directions, brought such low temperatures from the north that one morning the city woke up under a rare blanket of snow. Sad, heavy clouds crawled across a lightless sky. In our unheated rooms we shivered to the discordant accompaniment of the military band.

  I took food to the prison twice a week, but I saw my father only twice a month. Though he had aged and lost weight, he did not seem miserable, as he was optimistic that Jamil’s efforts would soon secure his release. Jamil bustled about me more than ever, filling me with bleak despair. Every time I saw my father, he never missed the opportunity to talk about the ‘good lad’s’ efforts and praise his devotion, intelligence and tenacity. I understood all too well what lay behind his words. Aunt Rena and her husband had plenty to say in the same vein, while Gulnar too encouraged me to see Jamil as my future husband. She had another reason for wanting the marriage, which I will talk about a little later. But first I would like to emphasize that all these desires converged to weaken my own, which already tended to buckle under general pressure. Despite my European education, despite reading so many novels, despite the proximity of Bolshevism and its marital liberalism, I was still convinced in the depths of my being that one ‘does not choose one’s husband’. Too many, if not all, of my female forebears had been married without their own desires playing the slightest role. All these submissions weighed me down with an immaterial, but nonetheless heavy, burden. So, despite my revulsion for Jamil, despite my admiration for Andrey, I knew I would do what my family would push me to do. I put up with all the nonsense Jamil spouted in his nasal voice. I now thought he bore a striking resemblance to an earthworm: he had the worm’s rare agility—supple but graceless. As he squirmed and wriggled around me, I found him slippery, soft and revolting, just like a worm. In resignation I put up with him.

  My Uncle Suleyman had long cherished the idea of a marriage between Asad and me. Gulnar would have none of it. She detested Asad and claimed to love me.

  ‘I don’t want you to marry him,’ she explained to me one day. ‘Asad’s a nasty piece of work. He’ll only make you unhappy. And between you and me, he loves boys more. I’m not saying he couldn’t give you a child, but where’s the interest in that? He’ll make love to you once a month and will continue to beat you up as he’s always done. He’ll be rude and mean. Make no mistake, it would be madness to marry such an obnoxious boy. I don’t want it to happen.’

  So when Jamil’s candidacy was presented, she seized on it with alacrity. Not because she liked Jamil very much—she thought him boring and pretentious—but he was the first suitor to appear on the scene and she thought any man would do to counter the threat of Asad. Gulnar was so afraid of this marriage and so wary of any influence that might thwart her designs that she decided I should move in with her.

  When my cousin wanted something, few people could stand in her way. After several discussions that she already knew were pointless, Aunt Rena sadly let me go and I moved in with the young household, where the atmosphere suited me much better than at my uncle and aunt’s.

  It was a strange place, the old city—inserted within the walls of the former fortress on a hillside sloping down towards the Caspian. The castle of the former khans of Baku rose in state in the middle, with ancient flat-roofed houses crowding round it. Every so often they made way for a mosque, of which there were many within the crenellated walls, and the revolution—at least in the early days—left their life unchanged; the muezzins continued to call the faithful from atop the minarets, while the faithful continued to worship Allah and his Prophet in the mosques.

  When I moved to the old citadel, I felt for the first time that I was living in an Islamic city. The narrow, winding streets where only donkeys or camels could pass, the vast majority of women wearing the veil, the scruffy urchins playing jacks and swearing in the small squares under the shade of a stunted acacia tree: all contributed to this sense of the orient that was missing in modern Baku, with its new houses in the worst possible taste, its motor cars and its cinemas. It took the revolution and ensuing expropriations to bring many of the former oil barons into this neglected city, as it was easier for them to find lodgings here than elsewhere. Before these events the old city’s sole inhabitants had been the indigenous, indigent population, for whom we had felt only haughty condescension. Now the tables were turned and the once-neglected city welcomed us, plunging us into the ancestral atmosphere that fortune had helped us escape. There was irony in this return to the cradle of our forebears—though we had repudiated them, they welcomed us in these times of political upheaval.

  I liked living in the old city, Islamic through and through: I found its atmosphere comforting and safe. The very air you breathed whispered at every step, ‘Only Allah is eternal,’ ‘Only Allah is wise, trust in him,’ ‘Not
hing happens without the will of Allah.’ Those of a peaceable disposition felt calmed and soothed into submission and indifference. It was reassuring to listen to the call of the muezzins, while you felt outside time watching the veiled women walk by. You might say that this is all just the author’s fancy and that the reality elsewhere was just as frightening despite the muezzins, despite the old flat-roofed houses. Yes, that’s true, but the illusion created by the backdrop of days gone by offered moments of remission.

  I was delighted too to be back with Gulnar. We were bound by a thousand and one childhood ties, some more respectable than others. She was so vivacious, so absolutely amoral that it was beyond discussion and therefore no longer cause for concern, and so imaginative that she was a charming companion. She was perhaps slightly too self-willed, but I gave in to her with good grace, being myself still slightly childish.

  Always an early riser, I would go to wake the married couple, whose capacity for sleep was limitless and who wouldn’t open their eyes before midday without my ministrations. I would sit at the foot of the bed, while Gulnar, half-asleep, would recount to me the previous night’s erotic exploits. With cries of horror Selim would hide his face in the pillows and pull the blankets over his head in modesty.

  ‘What an idiot!’ Gulnar would cry. ‘You weren’t embarrassed yesterday to…’ Descriptions would follow that left Selim gasping in mortification. He would disappear completely beneath the covers, then continue to tug and twitch them violently in eloquent expression of his shame. His embarrassment never diminished, though the same performance was repeated every day—testimony to Selim’s sensibility.

  It was Selim who did all the household chores: he went to the market, lit the stoves, cooked our meals. Admirably trained by Gulnar, he found his servitude quite natural and it never occurred to him to rebel against his fate. In exchange he had two attractive, flirtatious women who were always smiling at him; would he have been any better off seeing us dishevelled and dissatisfied, preoccupied with household cares?

  After we had lived together for a month Gulnar started bitterly to regret the disappearance of polygamy. ‘Just think how good it would be if you could marry Selim too! It would be so much fun. Thank God, he’s got the drive for two, and anyway nothing would stop us making love as a threesome or taking lovers. I can tell you that I intend to be unfaithful to him soon anyway. Marriage is a monstrous institution if it’s not alleviated by adultery. Is a man obliged to sleep with one woman all his life and vice versa? Gregory is right.’ (Actually, I recognized Gregory’s opinions on marriage. ‘Fidelity is unnatural, unhealthy and depressing,’ he would say. ‘Whoever commits to it sadly wastes away and ages prematurely. It has the same pernicious effects as masturbation.’)

  ‘Mmm,’ Gulnar resumed, ‘we would have a good time as a threesome. It’s a real pity that polygamy is frowned upon.’

  She became very pensive.

  ‘There’s no getting away from it—I have to start thinking about being unfaithful to Selim. You said that Andrey Massarin has a charming flatmate?’

  ‘Let’s go and see them this afternoon unannounced.’

  I felt weak at the knees making this suggestion and took fright at my own boldness. I hoped Gulnar would refuse, as I wanted to hide in my corner. But she agreed straightaway, clapping her hands.

  ‘Of course, and it will be more fun just to turn up than to telephone first. If Andrey isn’t there, we’ll go back tomorrow. Where’s the problem with that?’

  It never took Gulnar long to act on her decisions. She told Selim at lunch that she was going to the conservatoire with me. ‘I think I’ll take up the piano again, and since we don’t have one, I’ll have to go there to play.’ She was already preparing her alibi for our future rendezvous.

  Even Gulnar hesitated outside Number 14, Pushkin Street. We stood on the pavement opposite, trying to summon the courage to cross the street and ring the bell. The two-storey house, with its covered balcony on the first floor, looked benevolently at us as though inviting us to enter. It had always known us. I had lived there until I was ten and after that I had come regularly to visit my terrible grandmother, who lived on the ground floor until the arrival of the Bolsheviks. Now she too lived in the old city, near Gulnar.

  At last we rang the bell.

  Andrey appeared on the first-floor landing.

  He came down with a light, calm step.

  ‘It’s good of you to come. I’ve been expecting you for ages. Come up, and don’t hold it against me that I’m receiving you in your own house.’

  When we left the apartment, my father had given it to one of our engineers. I had never been back. I walked into my old bedroom as though in a dream; it had been converted into a study and retained none of the aura I had ascribed to it before. When I say I walked in as though in a dream, I mean it literally. Doesn’t everyone have those dreams in which objects are both one thing and another? This room was ‘my room’, which I immediately saw in my mind’s eye as it used to be when I lived there—it had the same furniture, the same red curtains colouring the rays of the morning sun, the same carpet worn thin in one corner, the same smell, the same warm, reassuring atmosphere, but another room was superimposed upon it now, Andrey’s study. This superimposition that I imagined I saw existed in my heart too: I was equally overwhelmed to be in my old room and to be in Andrey’s study. Unable to say a word, I sat down on the hard, cool leather sofa beneath a bookshelf, and looked around me; then I looked at the view through the window, a view I had seen countless times. Gulnar, meanwhile, was talking gaily to Andrey, who listened with a self-contained smile to my cousin’s distracting chatter. She was explaining to him how glad she was to be married.

  ‘You know that girls here want to make love very young. Of course, there’s no question of them doing it before marriage, so they’re thrilled to be married.’

  ‘Even when they don’t choose their own husbands, as I think is the case in the majority of marriages?’

  ‘Even then. After all, it’s better to make love to an old hunchback than not at all. Those girls who are resourceful get by. And the others… well, it’s too bad for the others.’

  ‘And which group are you in?’

  ‘The first, of course.’

  Gulnar laughed and threw Andrey a look full of feeling. I felt uncomfortable.

  At that moment there was a knock at the door and a tall, thin, greying man came in, making a lot of noise with his gleaming boots.

  ‘Here’s Biryukov, my friend and collaborator! He’s a terrible man: a magician, an engineer, a linguist—he speaks seven languages—a breaker of hearts and even furniture when he’s in a bad mood, which is often. What else?’

  ‘Yes, what else? Charmed, ladies, to make your acquaintance. I know who you are without the need for introductions. Andrey has told me a lot about the two of you. Gulnar Khanim (and he pointed towards Gulnar) and here is Natasha Khanim (and he pointed towards me). You see, I know too that I should add the title khanim to your houri names. When I’ve been in a country for more than ten days, I already know its customs and begin to speak the language. So…’

  And he started to gabble in our tongue, choosing his words well but mutilating them shamelessly.

  ‘Now, allow me to kiss your hands, although it is not an Islamic custom. It is to take my revenge on your ancestors, who liked to cover our bodies with carpets and make merry upon them. But they certainly didn’t get as much pleasure out of it as I am getting today!’

  He kissed our hands very gallantly. ‘Strange representatives of the people,’ I thought to myself. ‘They are just like the society men who frequented my father’s house.’

  Biryukov gamely courted Gulnar, who seemed to enjoy it hugely. Andrey occasionally joined their banter, while I was silent. Stupidly, strangely, I wanted to cry. Why? Because now I felt the extreme, painful complexity of life from my own experience, not from the books of others. Andrey was Prince Charming in the most literal sense, while Jamil would become
my husband. Andrey was heroic and handsome and serious, and could be a hundred times more so, and I would still marry Jamil, who looked like a worm and whom I despised and hated. Ever since I had begun to dream, I had been waiting for Andrey, and here he was, a miracle, but he would leave without me. He didn’t need me, and even if he did, I couldn’t accept his love because the social barriers were stronger than my desire, because everything made Andrey someone to whom I had no right: religion, race, and especially his place in the revolutionary world, enemy of mine—everything separated us.

  ‘Why are your eyes sad?’ Andrey asked abruptly.

  It seemed impossible to explain to him, so I smiled without giving an answer and he did not insist. But he asked me other questions about my family and about myself. When it was time to go, I felt as though we had always known one another and were destined to be together, that we clearly had so much in common—he the Russian from the revolution, me the Muslim destined for a hateful marriage.

  I clung desperately to the chimera of an eternally predestined union with Andrey, but could not deceive myself.

  8

  Gulnar’s parents decided to leave the country with their four sons. There was no question of using the normal channels; it was practically impossible to get hold of a passport, as hardly any were being issued. Uncle Suleyman had, therefore, decided to ‘escape’. This heroic verb pleased him greatly: he conjugated it with sensual delight, repeated it with satisfaction all day long, artfully using it to impress his audience. The latter, although usually made up of his close relations, was carried along by it. I say ‘although’, because as everyone knows close relatives can usually be relied on to bring you down a peg or two and to avoid boosting your confidence. Nothing is more difficult than to shine in your own family: by some inexplicable chemistry your witticisms become platitudes, your original insights clichés, your pertinent ideas pedantry. But this harsh law did not apply to Uncle Suleyman. Respected, feared and admired, he was considered the oracle, the philosopher, the scholar of the family. He could indulge in flights of fancy in his speech or behaviour, confident of a positive reception from his family.