Days in the Caucasus

by Banine

  ‘We’re such physical opposites that we can’t harm one another’s chances. Quite the reverse: by complementing one another we’ll attract more men.’

  I didn’t feel any need to attract men, nor to discuss it, so I didn’t answer. Despite my reserve, Salome (this was the name of the young woman, who was Georgian) found her way into my heart through her persistent kindness. She extracted from me a confession of my love for Andrey.

  ‘What? You loved a Bolshevik?’ she cried in horror.

  ‘They’re still men,’ I ventured.

  Willing to see the man rather than the label, Salome accepted the idea.

  ‘Well, we have to get used to the idea after all. It’s true that the commissar who lives in our house is very handsome.’

  She sighed.

  ‘He never looks at me. I’m still afraid of them though.’

  ‘To be honest, life isn’t too terrible in Baku or Tiflis.’

  ‘That’s because they haven’t had time to deal with us yet. Just wait.’

  Whatever the reason, life in Tiflis really was pleasant and easy-going. Their sizeable wardrobes still allowed people to dress very well, while their stocks of gold and jewels, sold at regular intervals, ensured their lifestyle, as I’ve already said. If many of them had their houses requisitioned, nothing stopped them renting more modest, but quite adequate, apartments. When they got together, it was hard to tell we were supposedly living in a state of revolution. The well-dressed women, decked out in jewels, and men playing cards were characters that could have been found anywhere in capitalist Europe. It was hard too to imagine the dreadful social upheaval under way in Russia, which was bound to reach the Caucasus soon too.

  But let’s get back to Salome. My revulsion for Jamil was obvious to those who knew how to look, and my friend soon began to question me about my relationship with him. She was astounded to learn that I had not yet become his wife.

  ‘What? Don’t you sleep in the same bed?’

  I admitted that we did.

  ‘So what does Jamil do then? What do you do?’

  ‘I turn my back to him and read.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Oh, him!’

  ‘What do you mean “Oh, him”? Doesn’t he try to get close to you?’

  ‘Yes, he does.’

  Salome began to lose patience.

  ‘Please explain yourself. Doesn’t he do anything, say anything?’

  ‘He does, he complains all the time. It’s constant and turns my stomach. If you only knew how often I wish I could kill him like a flea. I would love to roll him between my fingers, to crush him until there’s nothing left of him. But yes’—I was suddenly in the mood for confidences—‘he does try to get close to me, to my back to be more exact, as I turn my back to him every night. And every night it’s the same tiresome performance. First he complains, while I keep reading. Then when he sees that his complaints have no effect—every night he hopes I’ll change my mind because of his complaining—he gets close to me and tries to caress me. My dear Salome, physical repulsion is torture.’

  ‘But you might be his wife anyway, my young friend. You know it can come just as well from behind,’ she laughed.

  ‘Definitely not. I’m not a little girl and know what I’m doing.’

  ‘So he’s happy to use the service entrance?’ Salome burst out laughing and I blushed.

  ‘He would like to,’ I said, deeply embarrassed.

  ‘And all this time you keep on reading?’

  ‘Yes, I force myself to.’

  ‘That’s priceless! And what are you reading? Something instructive?’

  ‘Very. At the moment I’m reading Dostoevsky—The Idiot.’

  ‘So you need a lover before Jamil has the chance to profit from a mistake and marry you properly. If you let him do it, you’ll be put off love for the rest of your life.’

  Once she had got this idea into her head, Salome couldn’t let go. I was wasting my breath explaining to her that I didn’t want a lover. She wouldn’t listen to my explanations and pursued her idea.

  ‘Let me get on with it. I’m ten years older than you and know what you need.’

  She began to take me out more often. We got into the habit of going out every afternoon, leaving our husbands absorbed in their cards.

  Summer was progressing in all its splendour: divine heat, unchanging sky, flying birds, trees in leaf, flowers and fruit. Only in summer am I truly alive—that’s when I thrive in body and spirit. One of our resourceful friends had transformed his garden into an outdoor tea salon, where on most days we would spend several hours. It was the most pleasant spot imaginable in the heat. Chestnut trees around a pond, rose bushes dotted over a carpet of grass—that was all, but it was a lot. It had cool air, birds, iced chocolate, of which we drank two, three, sometimes five glasses a day, until we got indigestion or were sick of it, but that didn’t stop us starting again the next day.

  One evening I became Jamil’s wife. Out of a need for protection? Out of a sense of the inevitable? I don’t know myself. I did not turn my back to him as usual, I did not pick up my book; I got into bed and lay motionless, waiting for what I could not escape for ever. Jamil took me in his arms and I did not resist.

  11

  We finally got a telegram from my father in late October announcing his imminent departure. We took the train straightaway and joined him in Batumi.

  We found him rejuvenated by hope—his look, his demeanour, his gait, everything about him appeared stronger. He was standing tall again, both in mind and in body. He was staying with friends, though their lodgings were less than commodious—Batumi was experiencing a severe housing shortage at this time. As for us, we ended up in a peculiar hovel, overlooking the sea, a vortex of all the winds in the world blowing in through the badly fitting doors and windows. The leaky ceiling too was open to the rains in every season. But we discovered this only later, as the sun was shining like a fanfare in a radiant sky when we arrived in Batumi. While we waited for the boat that my father was to take, we strolled down the promenade looking out over the Black Sea, which despite its name was bluer than the Caspian. Ridiculous palm trees, reminiscent of feather dusters, decorated the promenade. Children played in the sand—it all seemed so peaceful and humdrum. But the reality was anything but—there were revolutions in the world, partings and defeats, and everything seemed funereal to me.

  The two men at my side were talking non-stop. Jamil was the dream son-in-law: he venerated his father-in-law only slightly less than Allah and his Prophet, and listened to and obeyed him without demur. My father’s appreciation was evident and he dispensed his advice liberally, encouraging Jamil to ask his commissar friend for passports for the two of us, too.

  ‘It was difficult to request passports for everybody all together, but once I’ve gone, you can start again for yourselves.’

  Jamil agreed. I would have been delighted at the prospect of going to Europe, had it not seemed so distant and improbable.

  The stormy sea hurled drunk, demented waves crashing over the jetty towards us. The boat pitched violently, as it slowly pulled away from the land to which I remained bound by invisible cords, harder to break than material ones. This boat would reach another shore where I could have lived, had my parents not decided otherwise; I would have known neither Andrey nor the man to whom I had supposedly been given for the rest of my life. Dripping with rain, my father smiled to us above the ship’s rail and grew smaller and smaller. He was soon the size of my thumbnail, then merged with the grey mass of the boat.

  I wanted to go back; I thought grief had given me a fever and wanted to curl up in my bed, my refuge against all the ills of the world. On the promenade the ridiculous palm trees bent gracelessly in the violent gusts of wind. It was almost as wet and windy in our house, or rather in our room, as it was outside. Bowls placed on the floor revealed the weak spots in the roof, of which there were many.

  I went to bed feeling mortally tired. My fever w
asn’t imaginary: it rose along with my grief, mirroring its climb to the heights of utter loathing for life.

  Jamil fetched a doctor who diagnosed appendicitis. I readily slipped into illness with no desire to get well. I wanted to be ill, free from responsibility, disgusted with everything and everyone.

  Long days passed in this room, which grew colder and colder. The autumn rains had begun; I heard the drops fall into the bowls on the floor. Draughts of air raced round my bed unhindered. When I braved them and sat up for a moment, I saw the grey sea, the grey street, the grey sky; the rain merged everything into a desperate uniformity; I had the sensation of eternal rain. My imaginings were bleak and bitterness poisoned every moment. I saw my father reaching Constantinople, Paris, the Champs-Élysées, my sisters. I wondered if they ever thought of me. I wondered what the course of my life would have been had I left with them, but above all I was tortured by my uncertainty about Andrey. I imagined myself with him in distant cities—mysterious and beautiful; our life together could only be beautiful! The fever turned my reverie into delirium; we lived in a palace of crystal, inset with gold and diamonds; we savoured strange dishes served by invisible jinns, for we were alone in this palace, wonderfully alone, without masters or slaves, without children or parents. The world existed only for us, full of trees, flowers, scents—and silence. I craved absolute silence, the better to hear Andrey’s voice, the better to love him—nothing should distract me. I would wake up to reality from these ramblings, my loathing intensified.

  The doctor decided I should be taken to Baku and arranged to have me repatriated in a hospital carriage, due to leave in a few days.

  So I was wrapped in a blanket and carried onto a grey carriage, marked with a red cross. A nurse settled me on a couchette against a wooden partition, behind which constant groaning could be heard—from a typhoid patient, the nurse explained… I was well aware of the danger of infection from a louse bite, and lice were plentiful in our post-revolutionary world, but far from frightening me, the prospect gave me hope of ending the nightmare in which I was trapped.

  After two days of pain and fever I was back at Baku station, semi-conscious, and then in my mother-in-law’s house. Little by little I emerged from the nightmare and let myself live again—because I was young and because somehow I had some hope of a future.

  Fräulein Anna came to see me almost every day. She was still living at Leyla’s, sharing a room with my nephew, but was thinking of going to join her sister in England, who had long wanted her to come over. It would be easier for her as a foreigner to obtain a passport than for us, citizens of Russia. She had nothing to show for the long, difficult years spent with us; we were ruined and could do no more for her, but our spiritual destitution was greater still, as we even refused to show her gratitude.

  She sat at my bedside. I could see her head, now white, bending over her knitting—the only work her failing eyesight permitted her. She fixed her blue gaze on me with affectionate concern, filling me with gratitude. But my long-established habit of keeping my feelings from her (when they were good) meant that I looked indifferent. I never said much to the poor woman anyway and now replied in monosyllables. But Fräulein Anna talked—she talked about everything, especially about her forthcoming journey, which she was dreading. But since she could no longer be of service to us and was even becoming a burden, she felt obliged to leave for good. Fräulein Anna always wept at the thought of this separation, which seemed cruel to her, while I wondered with astonishment why she loved us. Even if you acknowledge that you love ‘despite’ and not ‘because of’, should there not still be a limit to the ‘despite’? She must have loved us despite a thousand and one reasons, and I am still amazed at this saintly woman’s capacity for self-denial and love.

  She left us not long afterwards, frail and nearly blind. First, she had to travel the length of Russia, still in total chaos, to reach her native city, Riga, and her journey was long and arduous. Nonetheless, she made it to Riga, and from there, after many adventures, to England, where this gentle soul found her sister and the affectionate atmosphere she needed but had so cruelly lacked with us.

  Though their former home had been expropriated, my in-laws all still lived together in one house. I had three brothers-in-law, each noisier than the last, who liked to eat, talk and quarrel. Their mother was a constant martyr to their lively disputes, never wanting to declare any of them right or wrong, as she thought she owed them all equal protection. Since the death of their father, Jamil as the eldest son had made himself referee of their internecine quarrels, which tore the brothers apart and him with them.

  My mother-in-law spent her time cooking to satisfy her sons’ insatiable appetites and bemoaning their inability to get on with one another. She very much hoped that I would make things better: ‘My daughter, who will henceforth be the light of my old age and the consoler of all my ills’ (she spoke in flowery language reminiscent of the Arabian Nights), ‘you must bring all your brothers into harmony. Why do they argue? For no reason, for no reason at all. I listen to them sometimes and say to myself: you brought idiots into the world because you are an idiot—that’s Allah’s just punishment for your sins; he always knows what he is doing. May he bless you, let me say in passing, you and your belly!’

  And she would give what she thought was a furtive look at my flat stomach, which she hoped to see swell as a result of her son’s ministrations. But she had to wait for this transformation, which must have caused her great sorrow, for in Islamic countries a household without a child is considered cursed. Crying or sighing, she would get back to her baking, roasting and simmering. ‘Ay Allah,’ she would say, and the chicken would jump in the frying pan, ‘ay Allah,’ and the sauce would bubble vigorously.

  I had to deploy all my diplomatic talent, all my now meagre energy, to stop myself being force-fed like a goose.

  ‘You don’t eat anything,’ my mother-in-law would sigh when I had consumed two plates of soup, half a chicken, several plates of rice and a dessert. ‘She will become thin as a rake and the whole of Baku will say they don’t feed her properly at her husband’s house.’

  12

  Time passed. The commissar friend promised us a passport in the not too distant future. Pessimistic by nature and by superstition, I didn’t set too much store by this and feigned indifference. I threw myself back into piano playing after long months of neglect. I read a lot in French and English and even started to learn Persian; I went out for walks; I played poker with my aunts, taking delight in calling their bluff and infuriating them; but I never forgot to daydream, my great consolation.

  One day the door to my room opened without anyone bothering to knock and in walked Gulnar. I gave a cry of shock, as she threw herself into my arms. I didn’t know how to behave—for all her faults I still loved Gulnar, but what I considered a betrayal had come between us. I did not return her kisses and, aware of my reluctance, she plunged into the heart of the drama with her customary resolve.

  ‘Listen, don’t be such an idiot! Why shouldn’t I have made the most of Andrey since you were giving him his freedom? It’s absurd to hold it against me! Perhaps you think I’ve taken something from you? You’re wrong! Andrey slept with me but it was you he continued to love. You should understand once and for all that they are two different things. While we’re on the subject, you’re a woman now. Do you like it, making love?’

  She was trying to distract me from the scarcely closed wound to my heart. I didn’t go along with the trick and disengaged myself from her embrace.

  ‘I can’t get over your betrayal.’

  ‘God, you’re infuriating! What betrayal are you talking about? You didn’t want Andrey any more so I took him. Your jealousy’s extraordinary.’

  I was starting to think that she might be right, so I took another line of attack: ‘And do you think it’s forgivable to run off without a word to anyone, without consideration for your parents, without pity for poor Selim? Well, it isn’t! Whatever you may say,
it was disgusting to go off with the man I loved.’

  ‘You’re all backward, riddled with bourgeois prejudice, dimwitted and only fit to be thrown to the dogs!’

  Gulnar sat on my bed, settled back on the cushions and started talking as though in a dream: ‘If only you knew how wonderful it is to live without traditions and habits. How every morning seems fresh, ripe with new experiences, how everyone you meet might change your life!’

  I realized that Gulnar was repeating the words of some recent acquaintance. She was gifted and adaptable, able to model herself on whomever she happened to meet. But beneath each temporary persona her underlying self remained intact, only growing stronger under all these, often contradictory, influences.

  ‘I didn’t stay long with Andrey. We went to Kiev first and stayed there a month. Then he was sent to Moscow to some kind of congress—don’t ask me what about. You know I couldn’t give a damn about politics! Well, I had a really good time there, which didn’t go down too well with Andrey. I think he didn’t really like me at all. He was so obsessed with you that he didn’t even let me talk about you. Whenever I tried, he changed the subject and if I persisted, he got angry. Everything would have been different if he had loved me like he loved you! We did make love a few times at first, very few let me repeat. One day in Moscow he brought a male friend round and that was the end of our liaison.’

  ‘Even so, aren’t you mad to behave so badly?’ I couldn’t get over Gulnar’s casual attitude.

  ‘Behave badly? You mean “sleep with him”? What’s bad about that? It does two people good, yet people have the nerve to call it bad! Humanity is so stupid! You too, you fall into the same trap! I didn’t think you were quite such a fool. Anyway, how did poor Selim take my escape? I hope he got over it.’