The Tale of Aypi

by Ak Welsapar

  “This is Captain Nurjanov from the police. Is Araz Atayev here?”

  “How may I help you?” answered Araz dryly.

  “There are some things we have to discuss.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “Life in general! What do you think it’s about? You’re awfully curious. Get dressed and come out, we’ll wait for you in the car. You’ll come to the city with us and talk to the colonel.”

  Finally admitting that the scene, rather than an unsettling dream, was an unsettling reality, he replied curtly: “Yes please do wait. I’ll put on some nicer clothes, I couldn’t go out like this.”

  “Your clothes make no difference at all to either yourself or us. Stop with all this chit-chat and come out!”

  “What’s this all about?” asked Ay-Bebek, peeping out from behind her husband.

  “It’s nothing new, just our old friends here to see me,” he reassured her. “I’ll have to go with them, but don’t worry I’ll be right back.”

  Soon the police car was speeding away towards the city.

  “Dispatch, pass the word up – we’re bringing in our ‘customer,’” radioed the captain.

  Two hours later they finally reached the outskirts of the city. As the car stopped at a traffic light, Araz, who’d become parched in the sweltering car, noticed an ice-cream stand and licked his lips like a child. “Comrade Nurjanov, with your permission could I buy an ice cream? Otherwise I’m about to dry up.”

  The captain scowled. “Citizen Atayev, are you saying you really can’t live without ice-cream? It’s no use trying to make light of this situation, you realize.”

  Later, the captain left him in a small room and vanished. The space contained only the essentials: a table, three chairs, a safe and a cabinet with folders visible through its glass doors. Two large windows with bars loomed over them. Araz went over and tugged at the bars, they didn’t budge at all.

  “Do you like it? It’s perfectly sound, as you can see,” quipped a plainclothes man stepping into the room. “This was built by Japanese POWs, crafty fellows who knew their work! In half a century nobody’s managed to escape from this maze. If you aren’t agreeable, you can vanish without a trace in here. I’ve no doubt you’d come to like the place too.” Araz returned to the table and began to lower himself to sit down. “What do you mean by just plopping yourself down like a roosting chicken? Who told you to sit?” asked the plainclothes man abruptly, his eyes boring holes. Araz shot up again. “That’s more like it.”

  The man carefully placed himself in a chair, then pressed a button on the table. Soon after, a prettily dressed young girl entered the room and put a tray down before him. “Comrade Colonel! Coffee and ice cream. Is there anything else?”

  “No thank you,” replied the Colonel in an authoritative tone, “that’s enough for now.” The girl left as suddenly as she had entered. The Colonel sipped on his coffee and poked at the little dish of slush with his teaspoon.

  “Ice cream is troublesome here, it melts before you can finish eating it. Now, to eat your ice cream in Leningrad or Moscow! They don’t have real ice cream like that here, and they never will,” he said, glancing sidelong at Araz. “But what can you do? One’s got to eat it anyway! I don’t suppose you also like ice-cream?”

  Araz gulped and swallowed. “Ah no, I don’t care for it myself” he answered mildly.

  “Fine, then I’ll have to eat it myself, though really I’d prefer to just drink my coffee. In this scorching heat ice-cream is a real relief, but suit yourself.” Just as if he were at a restaurant sampling the dessert course, he savoured the ice cream spoon-by-spoon, revelling in its cold refreshment, enthusiastically placing it on his tongue and closing his eyes as each morsel of the treat slipped down his throat.

  Araz looked away at the blank walls. He noticed a stain just above and to the back of the Colonel’s head, discoloured from the surface around it. “Whose portrait hung there?” he wondered to himself. “They must’ve had some reason to remove it. It’s the only thing in the whole room that’s out of place.” After he emptied the bowl, the Colonel settled into his chair like a cat that had licked a saucer full of cream, sipping on some more coffee. Then, as if he were asking a child, Araz posed his question: “I won’t insist on disliking ice-cream, but to tell the truth, right now I’d rather like to know who I’m talking to.”

  The Colonel’s eyes first narrowed as if he were angry, then just as suddenly turned round as saucers. “Who asks questions here? You or me?” He took the napkin from the tray and cleaned his fingers. “You’re overstepping your bounds, don’t you think? Stand up!” Araz stood up. “Sit down!” Araz looked dourly at him.

  “No more jumping up and down, I’ll just stand.”

  The Colonel pressed the button twice, and immediately an ox-like brute of a young man came in and stood behind Araz. His fists were like sledgehammers.

  “Help this one to sit down,” muttered the Colonel, “but don’t break the chair.” With one hand, the youngster slammed Araz into the chair like a misbehaving child, with force that seemed near to crushing it beneath him.

  “That’s enough. Comrade Lieutenant, bring him an ice-cream, if you please.”

  “What kind?” the brute asked peevishly.

  “Whatever he likes, that’s what.”

  The athletic Lieutenant soon returned with a small dish of ice cream he placed in Araz’s lap, then silently left again. “Eat away, brave champion,” encouraged the Colonel. “Only, if you want to eat ice-cream whenever you want like me, do something honest and worthwhile with yourself!” Araz eyed the ice cream longingly, and then glanced at the Colonel. He decided it wasn’t worth taking serious offence at these remarks.

  “So I sit around doing nothing, do I? I work just like anyone else, take care of my children and… ”

  “No” interrupted the Colonel, “you don’t! You’re a parasite leeching off our Society. A freeloader! People like you are overturning our socialist society! If it weren’t for the likes of you, we’d have already achieved true communism! Our socialist homeland has been giving you welfare for years, teaching your children, and what did you do while all this money was being spent?”

  “I fish. I’m a fisherman,” said Araz, despising caution.

  The colonel rapped his fingers against the table:

  “You’re not a fisherman, you’re a thief: a poacher! If you don’t straighten out, you’ll be peering out through those bars. A five-year sentence! All you breakers of Soviet laws are little fleas and bloodsuckers! So that you’re able to understand better, let me tell you a story from years ago when I was working in Leningrad.”

  “Comrade Colonel!” Araz interrupted, putting the melting ice cream on the table. “You’re a Turkmen, just like me, aren’t you? And you have worked in a place like Leningrad?”

  “You’re the only Turkmen here,” spat out the Colonel. “I’m a Chekist. We may be from the same country, but we’re of different races, understand? You’re an absolutely useless creature of a village. Whereas my homeland is the entire Soviet Union! Wherever the Party sends me, that’s where I go!” He arose decisively and looked out through the bars on the window. He then continued almost tenderly, “Now eat up your ice-cream before it completely melts. You’ve got that Turkmen pride, one word and you’re ready to burst with anger.” Neither of them spoke a word and the room grew quiet for a moment. Then the Colonel returned to his seat and continued his monologue. “Now son, if you promise to clean up your act, you’ll be able to go back to your family like nothing ever happened. Of course they’re anxious about you. You’re from the old fisherman stock, so I’ll put it in words you can understand: Don’t try to sail against the wind, but choose the right course and keep your sails trimmed; if not for your own sake, then for your wife and those little kids. The two of us aren’t going to decide how anyone should make a living or where; it’s all ove
r our heads. In Moscow, at the Kremlin, places you’ve never seen, that’s where they figure these things out. Our job is to obey and whether you like it or not that’s our duty. We’re Soviet citizens after all.”

  The Colonel did not anticipate the villager’s response. “Sure, comrade Colonel, that’s how things used to be, but now comrade Gorbachev said we can make our own choices about everything.” The Colonel scrutinized Araz from head to toe, even his disreputable old shoes, as if seeing it all for the first time. He looked slightly askance.

  “So what? Yes, Gorbachev is saying those things, who else?” growled the Colonel insinuatingly. “The long and the short of it is, we’ve found a little job for you by the coast. Just like before! We have no intention to take you away from the sea. You’ll be a warehouse guard at the port. So don’t waste a moment getting started, let me close your case; it’ll be the best for us both.”

  Araz took a deep breath, “I won’t leave my village,” he said.

  “Why not?” inquired the experienced Colonel with a somewhat allusive undertone; he was in no rush to get angry. “If life demands it, what can you do? You’re already past thirty, a settled man, but you are still acting like a kid. Are you forgetting that you have children of your own? Don’t you know how difficult your situation is? We know more about it than you do. For example, everyone else in the village is sick and tired of you; they won’t even invite you to weddings anymore: You weren’t invited to Mered Badaly’s. You’re a nobody now, comrade. Araz Atayev, if a man doesn’t listen to good advice and behaves as stubbornly as you, there comes a day when he ends up all alone.”

  “No, it’s a lie!” protested Araz. “I would’ve gone to the wedding, but something came up and I couldn’t.” He remembered what his wife had said, and now regretted this. “So now you’ll try to throw me out of my own village because I didn’t go to one little wedding? I’ve got to give up everything I’ve ever known or had just for that? The place my parents grew up? The place where their graves lie? Betray all that to become a useless wanderer?”

  The Colonel was running out of patience listening to all this. He rose to his feet, with his hands gripping the edge of the table, then paced the room thoughtfully with his arms crossed behind him. He went up to Araz and whispered in his ear: “Stop parroting that over and over again! It is a tendency of which I am well aware. Don’t you ever get tired of it? If those graves are so important to you, fine, let’s relocate those as well. There’s no problem for us, either before or after you leave yourself. And we can move Aypi’s grave too, if you want. They say everyone’s so afraid of her there that no one can sleep.”

  “Aypi has a grave?” wondered Araz, “they say she was never properly buried.”

  “Nothing is beyond us!” replied the Colonel emphatically. “If necessary, tomorrow we can find her grave wherever you like. See if I don’t, but stop your foolishness, so that you don’t make trouble for the everyone.”

  “Why should we be the ones causing trouble?” asked Araz, stroking his chin. “You’re the ones causing trouble for the village; we just want to stay put. If you let us mind our own business, that’s fine by us.”

  “Listen here,” said the Colonel loudly, to make sure it got through, “If you don’t stop stirring up trouble and agitating people against the government, you’ll be criminally charged under the articles of the legal code dealing with social parasitism and hooliganism. Actually that’s what my Leningrad story is about. In the 60’s, there was this Brodsky fellow, a real parasite you see, he’d write a line of nonsense, and imagined himself an unrivalled poet. So they got rid of him, threw him out of the country. Do you think it was a picnic? Eventually he took a prize from the troublemakers, and then he had no place in his homeland. In short, put yourself in order, or you’ll wake up in Siberia!” The Colonel came up to Araz again, and stared right into his eyes. “Comrade Atayev, do you want to go to Siberia? Shall your children come with you or stay with their people? If you’d stop your idiocy, and I don’t believe you are such an idiot, then think, dammit! Tonight you’ll sleep in a cell here. Set yourself straight by tomorrow at any rate, otherwise it’s on you! Clear?”

  They put Araz into a cell and he passed the night on a wooden bench. In the morning, hearing that Araz still hadn’t yielded, the Colonel gnashed his teeth and ordered the fisherman out of the city. The duty officer took him in a car and left him at the edge of the city at the crossroad through the desert to his village. They ordered him to go on foot only; boarding any vehicle was forbidden.

  He began walking steadfastly, but soon the terrible summer sun peeped over the horizon. Occasionally a car would pass by without stopping, as though he were invisible, or perhaps someone back there had ordered them not to. He was alone in this unjust struggle, being beaten, and he felt on this day more than any other how harsh was their treatment of him. If only the whole village had stood up against this tyranny together, then it wouldn’t have to be borne by one man.

  By the time the sun rose, he’d already emptied his bottle of water, but he could only keep going forward. Though thirst and fatigue pressed down like a weight on his mind, he never forgot this. His feet were unwilling to take another step or carry his body farther, but he dragged them on anyway. As he staggered along like a scarecrow under the cruel sun, a car suddenly pulled up beside him. The driver opened the door and urged him in and gave him some water. He pitied Araz’s terrible appearance, and asked him question after question, which Araz’s thirst-swollen tongue could not immediately answer. When asked where he was going, Araz pointed forward. After he came to himself, he began to answer some of the questions, and explained quite simply why he was walking on foot in the deadly summer sun: A colonel in plainclothes had forbid him from riding in vehicles. The car stopped immediately.

  “Brother, get out of the car!” begged the driver, “Out, if you don’t want to ruin my life! I know I’m a coward, but I just can’t carry you. Have mercy on my children; I have no intention of going up against the government. If that’s what you’re doing, then you’re a strong man who won’t need my help. You don’t have too much more to go, just keep going on as you have been, and you’ll be home. The weather will start to cool down in a few hours.”

  Araz left the car without a word. What could he say? The car sped away in a storm of dust, but after only a brief interval, went into reverse and came back. The man stopped beside him and opened the window. “Please brother, bless your soul, just please don’t tell anyone that I gave you water and picked you up! You’ll destroy me; I have babies at home, please have mercy on them!”

  “Yeah, don’t worry,” said Araz, and the car revved and quickly sped forward into the dust again, vanishing from sight.

  The next morning at dawn, with his feet as senseless as wooden blocks, he approached his home. With dimming eyes he saw Ay-Bebek staring at him as she sat statue-like on the front steps. She took him in her arms and painfully walked him up the stairs. She knelt down beside him in the doorway and began to weep. It was difficult to tell whether out of sorrow or joy – perhaps both. He tried to smile, but he was too tired even for that.

  “Don’t cry, I’m alive after all,” he said, before losing consciousness.

  11

  At the first premonition of dawn, Aypi’s ghost floated down from above and into the winding, dishevelled streets. As the sun rose in the sky to the height of a spear, the village, as it always did, came to life. Like sturgeon in shallow water, people went back and forth leaving wakes behind them.

  Mered Badaly, smoking his after-breakfast pipe, was walking along the street when Aypi flew up to him and rasped in his ear:

  “Men are dishonourable cowards! They play a crooked game and repress their wives!”

  Mered Badaly started and peered around, then cleaned his ear out with his thumb. She wanted to speak and be heard, so she cried mockingly into the old fellow’s ear, “Woman: the head! Man: the feet!” />
  He stopped short and looked around again. “What in the world?” he said to himself. “If a man lives long enough, wretch that he is, he’ll see every sort of thing. If a voice speaks in your ears, how can you answer?”

  The voice came again in his ear: “Man fears woman!”

  Mered Badaly looked up into the sky, in case that was the source of the voice.

  “A woman’s ruin is her husband!”

  Mered Badaly wondered who the speaker could be that was joking with him like this. Was it someone hiding behind one of the houses?

  He leapt over to peek behind a nearby hut, but it was completely quiet. He continued on his way, puzzled. There weren’t many up early as him, so it was remarkable that someone would bother him at this hour. “But who knows,” he said to himself. “’Every herd has its culls,’ and a village has every sort of person. We may be small, but there’s no shortage of examples in town. We even have our round-heeled women, just like the big city. It seemed like the voice came from the sky, didn’t it?”

  “Hey!” he shouted, to no avail. “Speak up! Isn’t that Toti-Naz’s voice? No,” he reassured himself, “I haven’t heard yet that whores can fly, not living ones anyway; the dead ones are another story.” The old man’s thoughts made him apprehensive. “Black bird, black bird, knock on wood! I take it back!” he chanted.

  After seeing how useless that woman’s husband was, Mered Badaly wasn’t inclined to blame Toti-Naz too much, and considered the fault to be her spouse’s. There was no way to wash a dirty woman’s face, but if she was dirty, the husband must have been unworthy of her respect. God give patience to the wife of a feeble man! A weak man will send a headstrong woman to run after everyone, even if she wouldn’t have strayed of her own accord. Pirim’s wife though, had no interest in labour, whether hard or skilled – just street walking. The woman had caught the thirst for money and would go to the city any time she could, then return like a snake in a new skin. People knew she wasn’t earning an honest living, but who would openly reproach her or her husband? Everyone’s troubles are enough for themselves, and Toti-Naz’ infamy was a matter for herself and her family. There were many people who disliked it, but they simply waited for the situation to resolve itself, as did Mered Badaly. He reminded himself, “there’s no village without a burglar, and no forest without a wolf”. Else, the village’s honour would rest on his and his contemporaries’ shoulders. Everything was according to the times, and after all, was his own boy different from the rest? He didn’t have the faintest idea of preaching to anyone now; he was happy as long as they didn’t preach against him.