Days in the Caucasus

by Banine

  The passport lay open on the table, where all our visitors looked at it with a mixture of respect, envy and superstition. There it was, the neatly bound, brand-new passport, so long coveted and so miraculously obtained, a symbol of freedom and adventure, both paper and wizardry at the same time. Gulnar did not leave my house at all: three-quarters of the time she behaved quite arrogantly, saying nasty things to me and succeeding in being thoroughly objectionable.

  ‘It’s only cretins who have all the luck! You could have left with Andrey but you didn’t! You missed a wonderful opportunity to change your life for the better. So it would only be fair if you had to pay for your stupidity with a miserable life! But instead you’re going abroad! No, no, it’s insanely unfair! I hate you.’

  With that, she threw herself on my shoulder. God knows how long she would have sobbed there if I had let her! But I didn’t have the time to comfort her. We were leaving that night and I still had visits to make. I invited her to join me.

  ‘All right,’ she said, wiping her eyes, ‘that would be better than nothing.’

  We began with her family, whom we found at each other’s throats. That morning Uncle Suleyman had inadvertently left his wallet out and Asad, thinking he was alone, had extracted three hundred million roubles to buy a few packets of tobacco…* But one of the little brothers had been hidden under the table playing with his lead soldiers and had witnessed the scene. He had wasted no time telling his father.

  ‘I didn’t bring you up to steal from my wallet!’ he raged.

  ‘Only from other people’s!’ Asad growled.

  He received a slap for that—not a rational argument but one that always had an effect on Asad, who admired force. Defeated, he said no more. My aunt shed a few tears, then everything returned to normal.

  ‘So you’re going?’ Uncle Suleyman gave a shrug. ‘With your midget husband instead of…?’

  He made a solemn gesture towards Asad, who was behind him. My cousin used his strategic position to make an obscene gesture in my direction.

  ‘You’ll be sorry one day that you didn’t marry him!’

  My aunt intervened. ‘Oh Suleyman, stop getting at her. As if you didn’t know the child was just doing what her father wanted.’

  Her husband turned pale.

  ‘Don’t mention him to me—that murderer, that thief, that bastard—’

  ‘Be quiet! He is my brother and this child’s father, after all.’

  ‘No, I will not be quiet. You should have chosen another brother and she should have chosen another father. He’s robbed us all of your father’s inheritance—’

  ‘That money’s mine. Why are you sticking your nose in?’

  ‘That money’s yours? Do you think I’d have married you without the prospect of an inheritance? With your looks? With your breasts like tobacco pouches? With—’

  He didn’t get the chance to finish. My aunt grabbed a cushion and brought it down on her husband’s head; the two little brothers clapped their hands—the two older ones must have been delighted but kept it to themselves. Gulnar gave a tactless giggle. Uncle Suleyman’s reaction was the least expected, as befitted such an essentially original man.

  ‘All right, let’s talk about something else,’ he said gruffly, putting the cushion on a chair.

  And a peaceable conversation ensued. My aunt served a farewell tea, by the end of which we were all emotional. We reminisced about the good old days when we were rich, respected (‘Though not respectable,’ Gulnar added), envied and even—joy of joys—hated by some.

  ‘I remember a charity evening at the governor’s residence. That pretentious Taghi Ruslanov entered fifty thousand roubles on the donations list. I had to sign straight after him so I wrote seventy thousand. You should have seen him turn green with envy! The thug wanted to kill me! I was laughing in my beard!’ He recalled other memories in the same vein, all about crushing others with his wealth. ‘Money is beautiful!’ he concluded with poetic fervour, and all the family sighed with him, except Gulnar, who waited a moment before saying in honeyed tones:

  ‘Well, it’s a good thing it’s all over—the reign of the plutocrats, the exploitation of the workers, the whole shebang!’

  ‘Idiot,’ shouted her father. ‘Did you learn this nonsense at the school?’

  ‘More like in the beds of the gentlemen of the Third International,’ Asad hissed.

  His mother exploded: ‘Spawn of Satan, you’d eat your sister alive if you could!’

  And they were off again, quarrelling. I got up and said firmly, ‘I have to go. I’ve still got to see Grandmother and Aunt Rena.’

  This put a halt to the discord and ushered in a touching farewell scene. Even Uncle Suleyman became almost sweet, which wasn’t like him at all. Just as he used to do when I was a child, he touched my breasts, saying, ‘Titties, titties,’ and wiped a minuscule tear from the corner of his eye. My aunt cried openly. Asad and Ali pinched my bottom, but gently to show their goodwill, and the two little brothers clung to my skirt. At last I managed to leave and Gulnar and I walked the short distance to my grandmother’s house.

  She was not sweet. She was highly suspicious of any country outside a circumference of fifty kilometres. Once past the fifty-kilometre mark they were all equally far away—France, Crimea, America or Batumi.

  ‘Well,’ she muttered, ‘tell your father he should come back soon. As for you, you’d do better to bring children into the world here, rather than running about all over the place where people will have no respect for you. Well, Allah’s will be done!’

  She said the Fatiha in my honour, then dismissed me with a parting shot—don’t become a whore. She must have thought all her granddaughters had the requisite qualities for the profession, as she never missed a chance to caution us against this temptation.

  My poor grandmother was no longer the woman overflowing with vitality, authority and virulence she had once been. Age was taking its toll, of course, but so were the social changes: she saw their effects, without appreciating their causes; she understood none of it and suffered as a result; she resigned herself to it, strong character that she was, but this resignation left her diminished in body and soul. She was no longer so ready with her insults, gave orders more gently, got angry less and less. Poor Grandmother—she would have felt at ease only in the era of Islamic stagnation, but was condemned to live through unprecedented upheavals… She died not long after my departure, Allah’s name on her lips.

  Aunt Rena cried a lot. I was her favourite niece and she thought we would never see each other again. She felt old, miserable and alone. That’s what she told me, without heed for the feelings of her, fortunately deaf, husband. His deafness was getting worse, making communication with him extremely annoying. We had to shout words into his ear several times, straining our voices so he could hear. He often resorted to pencil and paper now to spare everyone the wearisome effort.

  ‘It would be better if he died,’ declared Aunt Rena with quiet cruelty. ‘He’s neither use nor ornament. He bores himself and everyone else.’

  ‘Come, Aunt, if those were the criteria, there would be hardly anyone left on earth! Useful people are rare.’

  Aunt Rena made a dismissive gesture, then was convulsed with sobs.

  ‘You will see other countries, other nations, other people. I’ve never been anywhere but Russia, because of him’—nodding scornfully towards her husband—‘who always promised me a trip to Nice, but didn’t keep his word. You’re young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Whereas I…’

  The poor woman broke my heart, but at the same time her pain made me obliquely happy at the thought of a limitless future stretching before me like a field, a field that was empty now but could at any moment be covered in thousands of plants, fruit and crops of every kind. I didn’t think it could remain barren or be covered in thorns. Those are not ideas that occur on the threshold of life.

  The more she cried, the more I rejoiced: ‘You’re young, you’re not staying h
ere, you’re not trapped for ever in your marriage, everything, every experience can still be yours!’

  Disconsolate, tears streaming down her face, Aunt Rena clasped me to her heart for a long time. Of course, I was sorry for her, but I couldn’t stop a growing sense of elation at the contrast between our fates.

  Only my three brothers-in-law, my sister and Gulnar accompanied us to the station. The station did not seem so filthy now; there were not so many refugees from Russia; the trains were not so packed. Things seemed to have changed slightly in the past few months. Our compartment had a standard complement of passengers and seemed almost clean, but maybe I was looking at the world through rose-coloured spectacles.

  The last kisses exchanged, I got on the train. The bell gave the three regulation rings. The carriage was shaken by a great groan, echoed by Gulnar and Leyla, then the train slowly began to move. The platform went backwards, the station too. Tears of joy clouded my vision; just a touch of sorrow at leaving those with whom I had lived for so long lay beneath a great sense of happiness. The lights of Baku soon disappeared and the train plunged into the night, accompanied by the regular jolts that give every railway journey a strange rhythm and melody. But in the midst of my happiness a pain rippled through me that I had been less aware of recently: the thought of Andrey. In leaving Russia I was leaving him too, with little hope of meeting him again. Where would I be now if I had gone with him? In what town, what climate, what circumstances? Today I no longer ask myself such tortuous questions. All life that is, by definition cannot be different. An act is never down to chance but to the mysterious logic of all existence. If I do something, it’s because I cannot do otherwise. So why be tormented by supposed mistakes? Whoever professes this philosophy does what he has to do with a calm spirit. When things go badly, it’s because they are bound to go badly. A simplistic philosophy? Perhaps. Fatalism? Most definitely.

  * Inflation was at record levels.

  14

  I was seasick the whole six days it took the wretched boat to cross the Black Sea.

  I set foot on Turkish soil a total wreck, but I revived in just a quarter of an hour and began to study the new country with interest.

  In the new climate of this young Turkey, women already wore shorter veils, even revealing their faces. Many wore just a small veil, similar in style to a nurse’s veil, but in different fabric and all the colours of the rainbow.

  As a Muslim woman, I had to follow the custom of the country. I adopted this headgear with enthusiasm as I thought it flattering, and sported it in gauze, in tulle, in crêpe de Chine. Before long, though, I had had enough of Constantinople and began to wait for the passport that would allow me to leave for France. In a letter my father urged Jamil to stay behind in Constantinople and wait for him, as he had to return on business and would need his help. Ever the perfect son-in-law, Jamil acquiesced and dealt only with my passport. We had to obtain visas from the innumerable countries crossed by the Orient Express on its way to France—a task so arduous that it took two months. I spent my time walking around Constantinople. Thanks to the paucity of my own culture, thoughts of lost Byzantium did not trouble me, as they might have done another visitor. I saw Constantinople only as a city of sultans and Muslims. So, peace of mind intact, I went for my walks, admiring the unique location of this city washed by the sea. Every day I made a pilgrimage to a mosque, until I had visited them all; then I started again.

  Another attraction of Constantinople at that time was the Russian nightclubs, which gradually made their push westwards, eventually reaching Paris. The city teemed with Russian émigrés. The men argued, sold jewellery or accepted whatever job they could find; the women often tried their hand as courtesans—with success, on the whole. They claimed a good rate and had no shortage of admirers.

  My husband took me to the most elegant nightclub, the Black Rose. I think we went in particular because of a consommatrice. (This was the name given in Russian to the ladies who encouraged miserly clients to consume the services on offer.) It didn’t bother me, and I made the most of these visits. I had never frequented such places, which seemed to me the quintessence of the dissolute, elegant life, the kind of which one dreams when one is not a serious young person.

  Russian songs flowed thick and fast, as did the champagne. Strange to say, the patrons did not enjoy themselves at all in this ‘place of pleasure’, at least they did not enjoy themselves in the commonly accepted sense of the term. They were overwhelmed by a special nostalgia, largely the fruit of music and melancholy songs, and would have felt robbed had they been served gaiety instead of this noble sadness. ‘One comes here to weep, not to laugh,’ a regular told me, unsmiling, after I had shared my impressions. ‘Don’t forget that we have lost everything: our country, our fortune, our tsar…’ He gave me a harsh look. ‘Of course,’ he must have thought, ‘she’s a barbarian, a Muslim, not a real Russian; she doesn’t have a drop of Slav blood in her veins, nor a drop of blue blood either’ (he was a prince). ‘What does it matter to her that our Holy Russia no longer exists?’ That, or worse, is what he must have been thinking, but raising his glass, he said aloud, ‘Long live our Holy Russia!’

  I raised my glass too, out of politeness. My interest in Holy Russia was mild at best, but all that money had not been spent on my education in vain. So I raised my glass and sipped some champagne to show my goodwill. I knew that these poor people were to be pitied, as they had in effect lost everything. As had we all, in fact.

  With all these visits to mosques and nightclubs time passed rapidly, though not rapidly enough for me, as I was in a hurry to leave Constantinople, especially since Jamil would be staying behind. My sisters hardly mentioned him in their letters; they would casually send regards, barely observing the proprieties. Jamil felt resentful, and hurt, too. He thought he was excluded from the family, and he was not wrong: my whole family, with the exception of my father, was outraged at this marriage, which only exceptional circumstances could have produced. My sisters had already rejected Jamil’s advances, considering him ridiculous. They gave him no quarter, as they thought him too old for me and inferior in every respect.

  So he was worried, with good reason, to see me leave alone for Paris. One evening, he wept. ‘Yes, now that you’re going to join your family, now that none of you need me any more, no one will care if I disappear… quite the contrary! Your sisters and your stepmother despise me and will stop at nothing to turn you against me.’

  So feeble were his powers of perception that he did not know how much I hated him already; a little less perhaps than at the start of our marriage, but I still hated him consistently and with no prospect of improvement. No one needed to turn me against someone I had never favoured in the first place.

  I made some cowardly protestations, reassuring him that he would join me in Paris and that his fears were unfounded, but in my heart of hearts I hoped for the reverse. I desperately wanted to be rid of his voice and his wriggling, bothersome presence. I also wanted to be free of this obsessive gambler.

  His passion had become all-consuming. On arrival in Constantinople, his first concern had been to find other Baku émigrés who, like every resident of our city, played poker to their dying breath. On evenings when we didn’t go to the Black Rose, Jamil would get carried away gambling, while I would wait for him like a good girl in the furnished apartment we had rented in order to economize. Our stay at the Tokatlıyan, one of the two most expensive hotels in Constantinople, had cost us dearly, but it had not entered our heads at that time to live in a more modest establishment.

  So, while I waited for him in our apartment, Jamil slowly but surely lost all the money made from selling the last of our jewellery, until the day he told me we didn’t have a penny left. When a man accustomed to having money no longer has any, his first reaction is to go and borrow some. So Jamil borrowed a tidy sum but it lasted only a week, funding three trips to the Black Rose and four to the poker club. Meanwhile, he wrote to my father to explain our situatio
n and ask for his help. In Jamil’s defence I should say that he had suffered a crazy run of bad luck ever since we docked in Constantinople. Accustomed to winning by and large, he could not conceive of a change in his fortunes, and kept on playing, certain that luck would return. But it did not. After every poker evening he would return home crushed. I would be waiting, sometimes until dawn, unable to fall asleep.

  ‘You see,’ he explained, sure of finding a sympathetic ear (not for nothing was I granddaughter, daughter and niece in a long line of gamblers), ‘you see, I draw a full house and my partner puts down a flush. I draw a flush and he shows me four of a kind. And it went on like that all evening! What a streak of bad luck!’

  He started tearing out his red hair.

  ‘You should stop playing.’

  My advice was half-hearted, as I was sure it would be ignored.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. I won’t play any more,’ Jamil said humbly, certain in turn that he would play, if not the next day (we could go to the Black Rose for a change), then the one after.

  From one loss to the next, from one expense to the next, our debts grew at disconcerting speed. Jamil did the rounds of the moneylenders who were still prepared to take us on. But increasingly, as events took their familiar course, said lenders turned us down. Several times lack of money meant we had to forgo food in our sumptuously furnished apartment. We would empty our pockets and, if fortune smiled on us, we would find a few coppers to buy bread and a tin of sardines. Jamil would have readily watered this repast with his tears, as his hearty appetite was indignant at such a frugal dinner. He was also frightened by our poverty, the result of his fatal obsession, fearing it would give another trump card to his ‘enemies’. (He meant my sisters and stepmother.) I did not take it as seriously as him: I found our poverty amusing, believing as I did that it was temporary and I would soon escape it. And I was delighted to dine on sardines: as a child I had loved tinned sardines in oil and dreamt of being old enough to buy as many of them as I liked and gobble them down on my own—or, if need be, with other people. I had finally reached those years of relative independence when I could buy what I wanted and I seized every opportunity to fulfil my innocent dream. I would devour my dish of choice, Jamil’s complaints ringing in my ears.