by Zoya Pirzad
Armineh said drowsily, ‘One for the teller of the tale.’
Arsineh added with a yawn, ‘One for the hearer of the tale.’
I kissed them and said, ‘And one for...’ All three of us chimed in together, ‘...all the good little children of the world!’
I turned off the light and left the room. In the hallway, I smoothed out the cloth doily on the telephone stand. I knew that in another year or two the twins would exempt me from nightly story-telling duty, just like Armen, who lost interest in stories years ago. Then I will finally have time for the things I want to do, I thought. My critical streak started in, ‘Like what things?’ I opened the door to the living room and answered, ‘I don’t know.’ It was a depressing thought.
The television was showing a documentary about the Abadan oil refinery. Artoush was on the sofa, feet stretched out on the coffee table, reading the newspaper. I sat next to him and for a few minutes watched the pipes, the observation deck, and the workers in their hardhats. The pages of the newspaper turned, and a section that had already been read fell to the floor. I bent over, picked it up, and asked, ‘You’re not watching? They’re showing your work.’
‘I get to see my work in person from dawn to dusk,’ he muttered.
I read the bold print of the headlines: Ambassador of the Soviet Union to Tour Abadan in Coming Days. The Majles Elections and the Six Reform Bills. Construction of Homes for Factory Workers in Pirouzabad. New Swimming Pool Opened in the Segoush Neighborhood of Braim.
I folded the section. What was it in all this boring news that Artoush found so interesting? My ever-present critical streak chided, ‘First of all, it’s related to his job. Second, you knew about this from the beginning.’ I recalled the period of our engagement, in Tehran. At Artoush’s insistence I had gone to several meetings of the Iran–Soviet Society, or as everyone called it, VOKS. Each time I was bored.
I got up, turned off the television and went over to the window. I looked out at the boxwood hedge under the moonlight, bordering the yard in straight, orderly lines. Mr. Morteza had trimmed it the day before. After he mowed the lawn, I took him a sour cherry sherbet. He thanked me and then moaned that although it had been six months since he qualified for a scheduled promotion, the Oil Company’s personnel division had still not awarded it. He asked me to have Artoush put in a recommendation for him. ‘If nothing else, the Doc is Senior Grade. What we workers say carries no clout.’
Then came the same old question. ‘Why doesn’t the Doc get a house in Braim? Mr. Hakopian, who is Junior Grade, got a house in Braim.’ I repeated the explanation I had been giving to everyone for years – to my mother, my sister, my friends and acquaintances, and even to Mr. Morteza himself – that Senior and Junior Grade does not mean anything, and that one neighborhood is the same as another neighborhood, and that we are comfortable in this house, and that... Mr. Morteza just listened, as he did each time, then shook his head and wiped the blades of his garden shears on his oversize, baggy pants.
I ran my hand over the drapes and tried to remember the last time I had washed them. Then I remembered to tell Artoush, ‘Mr. Morteza asked that...’
The pages of the newspaper turned. ‘He deserves it. He works much harder than most Senior Grades in the Company.’ As usual, he pronounced Senior thickly and derisively. ‘Remind me tomorrow to tell Mrs. Nurollahi to remind me to call Personnel.’
I turned back to the window and said to myself, ‘Our master had a valet and the valet had a servant...’ Mrs. Nurollahi was Artoush’s secretary.
Across the street, the light in one of the rooms of G-4 was on. It was too far away to see clearly, but since all the homes of north Bawarda were alike, I knew it was the living room. The similarity of the houses aside, I had been to G-4 on many occasions, when Nina and her husband Garnik had been living there. Artoush did not like Garnik that much – not surprising, since there was almost no one that Artoush did like. The strange thing was that on this one issue, my mother was in agreement with her son-in-law.
The first time that Artoush and Garnik argued politics they went on for a full two hours. After Garnik left, Artoush said, ‘The Armenian Revolutionary Federation was once a powerful political party. Now times have changed. Why does Garnik still pound his chest for the Federation? I just don’t understand.’
Mother had replied, ‘I, for one, understand perfectly. Garnik’s father and uncle were infamous throughout Julfa for their tomfoolery. They called his uncle Arshak the Cackler.’
If Artoush was surprised by this irrelevant line of reasoning, he did not let on. After Mother left, I explained that many years ago my father had a friend who was a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and he was always joking and kidding around. My mother did not like this friend of my father’s, which was not very surprising, because Mother did not like any of Father’s friends.
I looked over at the window of G-4. Nina and Garnik were still living there just six months ago, and I used to pop over some mornings to see Nina, or she would come to see me. We would have coffee and chat.
Someone came and stood in their window. I only saw a shadow, but I could guess from its height that it was not Emily. It was certainly not her grandmother. It must be her father.
I remembered the night in that very living room when Nina set out what she called a ready-made dinner. Mother said, ‘It’s not healthy to eat cold cuts, sausage and scraps all the time.’
Garnik laughed. ‘Is there really such a thing as healthy or unhealthy food, Mrs. Voskanian? A smiling face and good intentions are all that’s needed! The way my wife serves up our food, why, even bread and cheese taste like Chelow Kebab. Where there’s a smiling face and pure intentions, vitamins will make their way through the body!’ With a guffaw, he put his arm around Nina’s beefy shoulders, and she went weak at the knees from laughter. Mother had frowned and the next day said, ‘Idiotic clowns! God’s matched them perfectly, snug as a door and its jamb.’
It did not matter to me at all if Garnik was a supporter of the Armenian nationalists (or as Artoush put it when he got over-excited, ‘He doesn’t realize that what’s best for the Armenians, as for the rest of the world, is joining the downtrodden masses.’). And it did not matter if Nina was messy (or as Mother put it, that ‘a whole camel caravan could get lost in her house.’). What was important was that Nina and Garnik were good together, always happy. I had never seen them angry with each other.
Once, over coffee, the subject of Artoush and Garnik’s arguments came up and Nina said, ‘You heard it from me, the both of them are talking nonsense. But I always tell Garnik, “You are right, my love.” And you must always tell Artoush, “Of course you are right, my love.” ’ She roared with laughter, took a sip of coffee and leaned back in her chair. ‘Men think that if they don’t discuss politics, they are not real men.’
I leaned on the window frame and thought how much I missed Nina’s laughter. I should call her up tomorrow, I thought, to ask how she’s doing. The light in the living room of G-4 went out. I thought of the afternoon again, and Emily’s frightened, delicate face appeared before my eyes. The girl had not said a word the entire time.
Facing the window, I said, ‘Some new neighbors have moved into Nina and Garnik’s place.’
The newspaper rustled. ‘Hmmm.’
I considered going out to water the lawn and the flowers, then remembered that the yard lights were not working. I decided against it, for fear of stepping on a frog or a lizard. I should have called the Company Housing Services to send someone out to fix the lights. I closed the drapes and sat back down next to Artoush. ‘The Simonians. Do you know them?’
The newspaper replied: ‘Emile Simonian?’
I pulled out a dirty old sock from under one of the sofa cushions. It was Armen’s. ‘I don’t know his first name.’ Then I remembered. ‘Yes, that might be him. His daughter’s name is Emily.’
The newspaper pages turned. ‘He’s been transferred to our division from Masjed-Sol
eiman. He’s a widower. He lives with his mother and daughter. I’m sure he’s all we’ll need to replace Garnik and make our world an oh-so-much brighter place.’
I looked at the newspaper, waiting for him to continue, but when no more news came out, I went over by the window to sit in the green leather easy chair, sock still in hand. I listened to the monotonous hum of the air conditioners for a while, then, from the bookcase by the window I took out the book that Mr. Davtian, the owner of the Arax bookstore, had sent from Tehran the day before. It was a novel by Sardo. Like all books published in Armenia, the colors and the print on the cover were very poor quality. A man with a goatee and a black cape had his back turned on a woman, who was kneeling on the ground. The sock in my hand got in my way. I tucked it in the pocket of my apron.
My hand rested motionless in the pocket, still holding the sock. I remembered the day I told my mother and my sister Alice, ‘I hate women who wear an apron from morning to night just so that people will think they are good homemakers. A woman is more than just a homemaker [thinking of Mother] and she should not dress up just to please others [thinking of Alice]. A woman should above all be neat and nicely dressed to please herself.’ I was, I suppose, hinting to both of them. Mother, though it had been years since Father died, was still wearing black and did not bother to dye her hair. And my sister was without equal when it came to messiness and clutter.
Mother had cocked her eyebrow. ‘So that’s how it is, is it? So a woman should just live her life and do everything for herself?’ She scoffed, ‘So why do your lips quiver with disappointment when Artoush doesn’t notice you are wearing a new dress, or that you’ve gone to the hairdresser, or put flowers on the table? If I’m lying, go right ahead and say so.’
Alice had joined in. ‘Well, where has it gotten you – you who are always supposedly so neat and tidy?’ After Mother and Alice left, I had repeated the question to myself: ‘Where has it gotten you?’ I had to answer, ‘I don’t know.’
I drew my hand out of the apron pocket and set the book back on the shelf. I was tired and did not feel like reading. Artoush tossed the newspaper on the coffee table and stood up. He stretched and yawned. ‘Will you get the lights, or shall I?’ The newspaper slid onto the floor. I looked at him. He had gained twenty kilos over the past seventeen years and his formerly thick black hair was now limp and thinning. Everyone called him Doc, because of his standing as an engineer, but because of his goatee, which was no longer so black, Alice called him Professor behind his back. He has changed so much, I thought. I must have changed too, but his voice cut off my thoughts. ‘I asked whether you’ll get the lights or—’
I cut in, ‘I will.’ I picked up the newspaper and stood there, untying my apron. I headed for the door and turned off the living room light.
3
Mother drank the last drop of Turkish coffee and turned her cup upside down on the saucer. Then, staring into space, she squinted and pressed her lips together, making her small eyes and thin lips appear even smaller and thinner. She was thinking. ‘Did you say she was very short? Was she pretty?’
I cut a piece of salted Gata and put it on her plate. ‘Pretty? I told you, she was at least seventy years old!’
Her chin tilted upward and she frowned. ‘Meaning what? Anyway, if it is really her, she must be over seventy. I was still wearing bobby socks when madame, with her wide-brimmed picture hats and frippery...’
I saw the spot. ‘Mother, your nose.’
My mother had a long nose, and when she drank coffee, the rim of the cup would leave a spot on the tip of it. She quickly wiped it off. ‘...and her seven-strand pearl necklaces hanging from her neck, cruising up and down Nazar Avenue in a convertible.’
‘She drove herself!?’
She bristled. ‘Go right ahead and interrupt me at every turn. No. She had a driver.’
I looked at the flower box on the window ledge and wished I had asked Mr. Morteza to change the soil. Gazing at the flowers, I remembered Mrs. Simonian’s face. ‘Yes, she must have been pretty in her youth. High cheekbones, big dark eyes and...’ silently I added to myself: a small elegant nose. In Mother and Father’s wedding photo, in the silver frame on the piano, Mother’s nose did not look long at all.
Mother put a piece of Gata in her mouth. ‘Delicious!’ she said.
I watched her, my chin resting in my palm.
Along with the books that Mr. Davtian sent from Tehran, he always included some salted Gata. One day Artoush had asked, ‘How does he know that you like salted Gata?’
Before I could think of an answer, Mother said, ‘He doesn’t send them for Clarice, he sends them for me. When we were in Tehran for the holidays, I went with Clarice to the bookstore. He was kind enough to offer us some coffee and Gata. I said that I don’t have time to scratch my head, much less to read books, but I just love salted Gata. Since then, whenever he sends books for Clarice, he sends some Gata for me.’ As she said this last part, she laughed loudly. Artoush looked over at Mother in surprise, and I looked down. Was it Mother’s exaggerated laughter that annoyed me, or the fact that I could not get my tongue to mouth the words: ‘Mr. Davtian always treats me to coffee, and he has known for a long time that I like salted Gata.’
Mother wetted her fingertip with her tongue, gathered the little crumbs of Gata left on her plate and ate them. Then she drew a Kleenex from the tissue box, folded it twice, and pressed the upside-down coffee cup onto it a couple of times. The rim left brown rings on the tissue. ‘It’s her, alright. Elmira Haroutunian. Daughter of Haroutunian the Merchant. She married Vartan Simonian, who owned a trade entrepôt in India. She had inherited a fairly substantial sum from her father, and the husband’s money made her really flush. She was known in Julfa as Elmira the Jinxer.’
I burst out laughing.
Mother frowned. ‘It’s no laughing matter. It’s not for nothing she got the name. Her mother died giving birth to her. A few years later, her nursemaid threw herself out of a window into the garden below.’
I wanted to clear the coffee cups, but she brushed my hand away. ‘Wait. I haven’t read my coffee cup yet.’ She stared out the window into the distance. ‘On the night of her wedding, her father got food poisoning and a few days later, he died. They said it was from the wedding cake. But why did only the father die? Everyone ate some of that cake...’
‘There go those Julfa Armenians again, churning the rumor mill,’ I said. ‘So maybe the cake wasn’t what killed him. Maybe he had a heart attack, or...’
Mother turned my coffee cup over on the tissue and blotted it three or four times. ‘She went to India with her husband and a few years later came back to Julfa with her son. The husband had been killed. They said the deed was done by one of their Indian servants. Then she disappeared for a few years – they said she had gone to Europe. When she showed her face again in Julfa, her son was all grown up. She was looking for a wife for him. Word went around in Julfa that the son had an incurable disease – otherwise, how was it he hadn’t married while in Europe? Much later, I heard the son had married an Armenian girl from Tabriz. Those Tabrizi Armenians are so easily taken in.’
She picked up her own cup and stared at the intertwined patterns left by the coffee. She said ‘Hmm’ a few times, ‘Ahh’ a few times, shook her head several times, and then set the coffee cup back down on the table. ‘Mine doesn’t say squat.’ She picked up my cup.
I thanked God that Artoush wasn’t there to hear the bit about the Tabrizi Armenians. The day I told Mother I wanted to marry Artoush, the first thing she asked was, ‘He’s Armenian, but from where?’ The instant I told her, she screamed, ‘What?! Who do these Tabrizis think they are?!’ If not for the intercession of my father – for whom it made no difference whether his son-in-law was an Armenian from Julfa, Tabriz or the planet Mars – our marriage would not have been so easy to pull off.
I looked at my own cup in Mother’s bony hands. A white cup, with tiny pink flowers. My mother’s hands were wrinkled, etch
ed with protruding blue veins. ‘Well, what happened then?’ I asked.
She looked up. ‘I heard her daughter-in-law went crazy after a few years and wound up in Namagerd. That’s where she died. Look! There’s a cypress in your coffee cup.’ It depressed me to think of Namagerd.
Mother set the cup down on the table and stood up. ‘A cypress means change and development. Maybe the Doc has magnanimously decided to oblige the Oil Company and accept one of the homes in Braim! Your Arab woman will eventually wind up in Braim, while you all continue to stew right here in Bawarda.’
I began clearing the coffee cups. ‘My Arab woman?’
She shook what must have been crumbs of Gata from her black skirt. ‘That dark tawny woman who, every time Mr. Morteza finishes mowing the grass and trimming the hedge, turns up to gather all the clippings into a bag and haul them away. She just materializes, presto! As if by magic.’
‘Do you mean Youma?’ Youma obviously lived in the Arab quarter, and the thought of her with a house in Braim made me chuckle.
‘Yeah, Youma. What kind of a name is that! I told you a hundred times, don’t let her in the house. You yourself told me the kids are afraid of her. With those crooked teeth and that tattooed face, you can’t blame them. She’s always wearing black, worse than me.’
She was right about that. Youma was always dressed in black, because she was always mourning the death of someone or other. I put the cups and plates in the sink. ‘They’re not afraid of her. It’s just that Armen once said he saw her eat a live sparrow, which was nonsense.’
Mother slung the black strap of her purse over her shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’
How long had she had this purse? How many times had the strap broken, and Mother had sewn it back on? How many times had I suggested, ‘Isn’t it time to get a new purse?’ How many times had she replied, ‘If I had wanted to buy new bags and new shoes all the time like all those bimbo ladies, neither you nor Alice would have gotten your Bachelors.’ I had repeatedly explained to Mother that the certificate in English language I got from the Oil Company was not called a Bachelors. And although Alice had gotten her Bachelors – in England, as an Operating Room Charge Nurse – the Oil Company had paid for her education.
