The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing

  On the other side of the room, Piatakov watched the Indian’s body relax, the dangerous glitter fade from his eyes. Piatakov walked across to the other window and the line of blue domes. A blue, blue world. Another comrade gone.

  McColl had never seen Caitlin so upset.

  “They sent the last girl back in a sack,” she said, in a voice that made him think of broken glass. “They’d cut off her head and her arms and legs, and they pinned a message to the sack: This is your women’s freedom.”

  A late-afternoon sunbeam lay across the white tablecloth, revealing a mosaic of ancient stains. McColl put down his glass of beer, adding another ring to the pattern.

  “She was only seventeen,” Caitlin continued. “Her name was Ulugai, and she wanted to teach her friends to read.”

  “Not a lot to ask,” McColl said quietly.

  “They read, they learn, they question. And then they say no,” Caitlin told him.

  They were sitting in the huge communal room that took up most of the party hostel’s ground floor. At the time of McColl’s only previous visit to Tashkent, this had been the dining room of the Hotel Tzakho, invariably packed with people eating and talking to the strains of a full orchestra. Composed mostly of Austrian prisoners of war, the orchestra had included a bewildering variety of national melodies in its repertoire. Now the room was nearly empty and almost silent, just them and three Russian men, who were chatting in desultory fashion at a table ten yards away.

  “Another woman was lynched for suggesting a husband shouldn’t beat his wife,” Caitlin said with a sigh, as if she couldn’t quite believe it.

  “Komarov thinks that the Zhenotdel workers may have been too confrontational,” McColl said, remembering his conversation with the Russian earlier that afternoon. “For their own safety, that is,” McColl quickly added when he saw the look on Caitlin’s face.

  “Does he indeed?” she said sarcastically. “And what does he suggest?”

  “That the killing of Zhenotdel workers should be classed as a crime against the revolution, rather than as simple murder. I know,” McColl said, raising both palms, “but it does make sense, at least in the short term. Men like these put no value on their own women’s lives, but if they know that the government holds your delegates in the highest regard, they might think twice about killing them. Which won’t help ordinary women much in the meantime, but at least you’ll be able to operate.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, looking slightly mollified. She was wearing a long Uzbek dress that she’d bought in the market that afternoon, dark blue with a pattern of large pink and white flowers. It suited her and went well with the bright red Zhenotdel headscarf that was loosely draped around her neck.

  Suddenly her face lit up. McColl turned to see two women threading their way through the tables toward them, one dark and probably Uzbek, the other blonde and probably Russian.

  Caitlin was on her feet, hugging the former. “This is Rahima,” she told McColl eventually. “We met in Moscow.”

  The Russian’s name was Shurateva. “I’ve got two soldiers outside,” she said after the introductions had been completed. “Just in case.”

  Caitlin turned to McColl. “It seems you’re not required.”

  McColl didn’t hesitate. “I’ll come anyway,” he told her. He needed to establish wireless contact with India but still hadn’t decided what to tell his putative listener. Attending a Zhenotdel meeting in such a hostile environment would be interesting for him and might prove dangerous for her. The empire could wait another day.

  There was a taranta waiting outside. On the floor between the seats, there was a film projector and a boxed reel of film. Two Red Army men, small and rather frail-looking Russians, were leaning up against the vehicle, rifles cradled in their arms.

  The taranta creaked alarmingly as they all clambered aboard, and the axles squealed as the driver set the ponies in motion. McColl was pleasantly conscious of Caitlin’s thigh against his own, but she was in animated conversation with the other two women. Soon they were crossing a dry riverbed and entering the old town, drawing stares from the local population. Shurateva shouted directions at the driver, who gave no sign of hearing her but went where she directed.

  “What’s the film?” McColl asked Caitlin.

  “Makul-Oi,” Shurateva answered him. “It’s the story of a Muslim girl who refuses to marry the old man her parents have promised her to.”

  And who wins out despite many setbacks, McColl thought but had the sense not to say. Why did propaganda always sound faintly ridiculous, even when it made such perfect sense?

  The taranta rattled down a narrow street and crossed a square that housed a large mosque. The sky was rapidly darkening, and a large flock of birds was drawing wide circles in the air above, cawing fit to burst. McColl felt a chill run up his back, leaving a sense of unease that he couldn’t begin to explain. He closed his eyes for several seconds, then opened them just in time to see a scrawny tortoiseshell cat slither under a gate.

  They arrived at the meeting place. McColl and one of the soldiers carried the projector through an arched wooden doorway and into a large courtyard. Rugs covered the ground, and about thirty Uzbek women were sitting cross-legged, their veils lowered, chatting with one another. When McColl and the soldier appeared, they turned their faces away, raising the veils as they did so.

  “You’ll have to stay outside,” Caitlin told him.

  McColl nodded and withdrew, joining the two soldiers outside the main doorway. This was set back from the street, on the rim of a semicircular space. A row of small trees on either side provided daytime shade for the wooden benches that lined the compound walls. Seating himself on one, McColl examined the scene. It was a wide street for the old town and seemed unusually quiet for the time of day.

  As if to confirm his suspicion, two young Uzbek men squatted down across the way, taking occasional glances in his direction.

  Through the door he could hear Caitlin talking in Russian, then pausing while Shurateva translated her words into Uzbek. The two women were setting the scene for the film they were about to show.

  One of the soldiers offered McColl a cigarette. He took it, feeling his hands needed something to do. Was he imagining the tension in the air? The two young Uzbeks across the street were staring straight at him.

  The whir of the projector was suddenly audible through the door, and flickers of light danced on the higher walls.

  McColl got up and placed his eye against one of the star-shaped holes in the wooden door. The film was flickering on the earthen courtyard wall, which had the strange effect of dragging it into the past, offering only sepia when black and white was required. But the women, once more unveiled, were drinking it in, wonder in their eyes and upturned faces. On the other side of the courtyard, Caitlin was seated on the edge of a veranda, elbows on knees, her attention switching back and forth between the film and its audience, a smile of serene contentment lighting her face.

  McColl felt a surge of sadness. For what? For whom?

  Back in the street, the two young men had turned into five. They stared at him, and he stared back, then ostentatiously slid his pistol out of his belt and laid it on the bench beside him. One man began whispering excitedly to the others; then all turned their heads in the same direction, looking down the street at something he couldn’t yet see.

  He was not in suspense for long. Another dozen men of varying ages walked into view, and the whole assemblage squatted down in a circle, like a bunch of soldiers receiving their last instructions before setting off on a mission. Which wasn’t an encouraging thought.

  After a few minutes, the meeting seemed to break up. They all rose to their feet, and two of the older men started across the street, walking slowly but with obvious purpose. McColl picked up his pistol as his Red Army companions reached for the rifles they’d leaned against the compound wall. When the
Uzbeks were about twenty feet away, he raised his hand to halt them. “Good evening,” he said cheerfully in their language. “How may I help you?”

  The use of their mother tongue seemed an unexpected development. The shorter, more intelligent-looking of the two offered a respectful bow. Like his partner he was dressed in a white linen shirt, matching trousers, and embroidered cap. “We wish to speak with our wives and daughters,” he said.

  “The meeting will soon be over,” McColl told him.

  “We wish to speak most urgently.”

  Too bad, McColl thought. “I regret that that is not possible,” he said. “This is a party meeting, a government meeting,” he added, remembering Komarov’s advice. “It cannot be interrupted. But it will be over in a very short time,” he promised, hoping it was true. A fresh contingent was approaching up the street opposite, and some of the newcomers were carrying flaming torches, which seemed to wrench the scene back several centuries.

  “It is not right,” the other Uzbek was saying, revealing several gold teeth in the process. “These are our women.”

  McColl just looked at him. The torches, the whining husband, the ludicrous religious trimmings. He thought of Ulugai, sliced into pieces by men like these.

  “It is not right,” the man repeated patiently, as if McColl hadn’t heard him the first time.

  “There is nothing more to be said,” McColl snapped, and dismissively turned his back. When he looked again, the two men had recrossed the street, but an imam had also arrived, and was intoning passages from the Koran, jabbing away with his fingers to emphasize each point. McColl stood and watched, thinking it must have been scenes like this that had greeted suspect witches in medieval England.

  He considered advising Caitlin to end the meeting before matters got out of hand, but loud applause and a quick look through the star told him the film had just finished. Two women were lighting kerosene lamps and hanging them from veranda beams; Caitlin and Shurateva were taking up position where the “screen” had been. When questions were asked for, several hands shot up.

  Across the street the imam’s voice grew louder and shriller. McColl had no idea where the nearest telephone might be, and any kind of search would mean leaving his post. The two soldiers were looking increasingly nervous and casting frequent glances in his direction, as if willing him to conjure up the magic carpet that would whisk them back to the safety of their barracks.

  McColl made up his mind. “Tell Comrade Piatakova what is happening,” he was telling the nearer soldier, when a stone bounced off the man’s shoulder, knocking him back a pace. Two more thudded into the wall close by. The crowd was advancing slowly across the street, all except for the imam, who was urging them on from behind, wearing the sort of facial expression that Haig might have worn at the Somme. McColl wondered if shooting the man would help. The rest might be shocked into flight. Or tear him limb from limb.

  He fired into the ground ahead of the advancing feet. The effect was dramatic: the voices both inside and out broke off abruptly, leaving only the city’s murmur.

  Then the men started forward again.

  “Inside,” McColl snapped, somewhat unnecessarily: the two soldiers were already halfway through the doorway. McColl ducked in behind them, and began searching for something heavy to reinforce the door.

  Caitlin was at his side. “What’s going on?” she asked. The smile was still there in her eyes—it had been too bright to fade so swiftly. Behind her the seated women were all turned toward them, their faces hard to read in the dark.

  “A deputation of concerned menfolk,” he told her, finally noticing a useful stretch of laddering. It might do. “Is there another way in or out?”

  Caitlin asked Shurateva, who asked an indomitable-looking middle-aged Uzbek woman. The sitting women all scrambled to their feet on hearing the question. “No,” the Uzbek replied in Russian. She walked past McColl to the door. “Who dares to violate my house?” she shouted through it.

  Angry cries responded. “Wife stealer! Daughter of Satan!”

  There was a thunderous crash, the sound of splintering wood. Before McColl could move, one of the soldiers fired through the wood, eliciting a yell of pain from the other side.

  Then the door fell inward, spilling men into the courtyard. The Uzbek women retreated into the farthest corner, some yelling defiance, others streaming tears.

  “Stop!” Caitlin cried out in the loudest voice he had ever heard her use. She stood fifteen feet from the invaders, palms held up to ward them off, her eyes brimming with anger. And for a moment she held them, but only that. She knew no words of Uzbek, and Shurateva, joining in, lacked Caitlin’s natural authority. With a thrill of horror, McColl noticed that one man was carrying a sword.

  He grabbed Caitlin’s arm and tried to pull her away.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted.

  He kept pulling, but she squirmed out of his grasp. “Don’t you want to fight another day?” he yelled back.

  “I can’t just abandon them!”

  McColl instinctively dropped his head as something swished past his ear, then turned to see something flash on the end of an upraised arm. He pulled the trigger, and the man just dropped, his sword falling behind him.

  Caitlin was trying to reason with another man, who seemed far more interested in splitting her skull. McColl put a bullet in the back of one of his thighs, and the single shot turned into a volley. A machine gun was firing in the street outside.

  A man fell backward through the broken door like a bloodied sack of potatoes. His Uzbek friends were spinning this way and that, uncertain what to do. McColl walked slowly backward, pulling Caitlin with him, until he could feel the wall at his back.

  No one came after them. Some men pulled themselves up and over the wall, silhouetting themselves against the night sky before they disappeared. Others just threw down their makeshift weapons and stood there waiting, suddenly submissive. They edged away from the sword on the rug, as if afraid it might explode.

  The outside shooting stopped, and at least a dozen armed Chekists rushed in, forcing the Uzbeks onto their knees. The man striding in behind them could only be the local Cheka boss, Yakov Peters.

  Komarov followed, his eyes ceasing their search only when they finally fell upon Caitlin.

  As Peters’s men began taking the Uzbeks away, the wives who tried to follow were roughly prevented from doing so.

  “Let them go with their husbands if they wish,” Peters said, staring at Shurateva.

  She met his eyes but had obviously been shaken by the events of the last few minutes.

  “Why wasn’t the Cheka informed of this meeting?” Peters asked her.

  “We did not think it necessary,” Shurateva said quietly.

  “You were wrong,” Peters said flatly. “It’s time you accepted that the Zhenotdel cannot function in Turkestan without our protection.”

  No one answered him.

  Out in the street ten or more bodies were spread-eagled in the dust, each with an attendant woman sobbing, keening, beating her breast.

  “And with their protection it becomes meaningless,” Caitlin said bitterly to no one in particular.

  An interesting equation, McColl thought, on the drive to Cheka headquarters. Perhaps what Arbatov had meant by his chasm.

  Peters conducted the postmortem. Watching him at work was interesting, if only for the way he defied the usual expectations: McColl saw no signs of the man’s legendary ruthlessness; he seemed like an ordinary, overworked copper. Peters listened patiently to Shurateva, only occasionally interrupting with a pointed question or comment. Komarov perched on a windowsill, face impassive, saying nothing.

  Rahima’s husband arrived, a handsome Uzbek about ten years older than her. He was clearly frantic with worry and was overjoyed to find her safe. She held his hand as if he were a little boy who needed com
forting.

  Caitlin at first seemed withdrawn, pale, almost in shock, but gradually the color seeped back into her face, the light to her eyes. Eventually something Shurateva said produced the faintest of smiles—an impoverished relation of the one McColl had seen on her face while the meeting was underway.

  He and she were driven back to the hotel by a taciturn Chekist. They walked up the stairs together; then, just when he thought she would disappear into her room without a word, she turned and took his hand.

  “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight,” she said softly, “but . . .”

  What was the “but”? McColl wondered as the syllable hung in the air. He tried to read her expression, then gently kissed her on the lips. “For old time’s sake?” he asked.

  “For tonight’s sake.”

  She led him into her room.

  They undressed in the dark, shadows to each other across the room, then lay down side by side on the mattress. McColl lifted himself on one elbow and kissed her again, his hand stroking the underside of her breast. Her arms encircled his neck and pulled them together.

  When darkness fell soon after eight without any sign of the Cheka, Brady convinced the others that delaying their departure until the town was asleep was the sensible thing to do. He was probably right, Piatakov knew, but the extra hours still passed with agonizing slowness.

  It was just past midnight when the three men clambered out of their hostel window and dropped onto the bare hillside. All were wearing the native clothes that Brady had bought at the market the previous day.

  A half-moon hung in the eastern sky, throwing off just enough light for them to quietly negotiate the steep slope down to the street. There they stopped to listen for any unwelcome sounds, but the road was empty, the silence so complete that Piatakov briefly wondered if he’d lost his hearing. The scrape of Brady’s boot on a stone was reassuring.

  They scurried across the street and slowly walked past the summer mosque. The minaret above glinted in the moonlight, but the compound and the alley beside it were shrouded in shadow. “Remember,” Brady whispered, “no shooting, whatever happens.”