Magomedov’s daughter turned out to be a pleasant-looking, plump chatterbox. Over tea and macaroons she told me all about her tastes, her joys and hobbies. She chirped on and on about her gouache paintings, her crochet hook that had broken the day before, her favorite books, and about her cat, who had caught some horrible disease and lost all its fur. Magomedov’s son, the veterinarian, sat glued to his chair the entire time without contributing so much as an interjection. He even kept his silence during the saga of the bald cat, though it would seem to have merited some reaction. He looked quite beyond his youth and, to be completely honest, ugly. His nose looked like an eggplant, and dangled right to his upper lip, and his hands were red and peeling from some unsightly skin disease. The whole time we were talking, he fiddled with his napkin and tore it into pieces. By the end of the conversation the entire tabletop was littered with tiny flakes of paper.
The veterinarian’s silence didn’t faze his sister in the slightest. You’d think that he didn’t exist at all, that at any moment he and his eggplant nose would dissolve into thin air. When he went out for a smoke, the plump girl lowered her eyelids and mumbled under her nose, as though to herself:
“He’s nervous. It means he likes you …”
“But he’s obviously bored!” I objected loudly.
“What are you talking about?” the plump girl was alarmed. “He’s just modest. Not some blowhard from off the street. A working man, wants to start a family. I should have married someone like my brother, but was blind. Couldn’t think straight for love.”
“I didn’t know you were married.” Now this was interesting.
“Was,” said the plump girl. “I left him. If my papa had been alive when I married that crook, he wouldn’t have allowed me to fall into the trap. So let me give you a piece of advice, Patishka: don’t fall for some guy with a handsome face.”
Her forehead furrowed from the strain. I regretted taking the conversation out into the deep steppe, but Magomedov’s daughter went on:
“I dragged him around on my back for three years. Mornings in the store, evenings I’d knit things to order. The one blessing is that we didn’t have children. But he spent all his time in the halal café jabbering about the Hadiths. I nagged him to go out and look for work, but he just snarled at me, like, I can’t do haram work, I’m like, he goes, studying. But really, what kind of studying is that—cramming religious brochures from morning to night? That’s supposed to be work, sitting around arguing about the Prophet’s Sunna? And all those guys who sat with him in that café blabbing, every last one of them was a real meathead. So one day I go: “Le, Yusup, what about how a man is supposed to take care of his wife, and if he doesn’t, she has the right to declare a divorce, is there something in your books about that? So he starts screaming and yelling. Fat this, fat that, can you picture it? He goes, dozens of beautiful girls are dreaming of him, but he turns them down, just so as not to veer from the straight and narrow. He goes, like, I don’t appreciate him.”
“How could he? What does he mean, fat?” Admittedly it was a little hypocritical, but it just slipped out.
No matter how handsome her slacker husband was, it would have been hard to forgive something like that. True, Magomedov’s daughter’s had plump hands, and her face was round, soft, and oily like a pancake. But there was something doughy, warm, and comfy about her.
“So now he’s welcome to spend all the time he wants with scrawny girls, no one will stand in his way. Let him hang on their chicken necks; mine is too pretty and healthy for him. Enough, I’ve had it, I’ve done my time dealing with two …”
She would have gone on and on, but the taciturn, long-nosed veterinarian, whose entire body sagged southward, came back to the table after having his smoke, and started in on the napkin again with his red hands. I had a brief fantasy of tipping him over with my hand, toppling him like a chess piece.
It was time to make my escape. I explained that I had to visit some relatives. The veterinarian summoned the waiter and requested the check. His voice sounded dim, as though he’d crawled into a tarred barrel and was broadcasting from inside. Magomedov’s daughter suggested we stop in the ladies’ room before leaving.
Once in there, she cupped her palms comically around her mouth and whispered into my ear:
“Don’t think that just because my brother isn’t a talker he won’t be able to stand up for you and himself. He’s not some run-of-the-mill twerp. Why hang around Moscow courtrooms grubbing for a meager pittance? Come back here, my brother will set you up in his veterinary clinic; they need someone there to deal with the paperwork. You can go to work together, and you can keep an eye on him. Don’t get hung up on his looks, OK?”
“We’ll see,” I murmured, “You can’t judge anything at first glance.”
“You’ll can see him again, spend some time together,” Magomedov’s daughter pressed on, waved her puffy hands in the air.
I couldn’t help myself and blurted out:
“Spend some time together?”
She took offense: “Have it your way.” She shrugged and ducked into one of the booths.
In short, a failure. I’d figured it would be.
By the time I got to the van stop, and from there back to the settlement, and knocked at Aida’s door, it was already getting dark.
“Just a minute—let me get the baby to sleep,” she said, seating me in front of a plate of pilaf.
I sat there eating the pilaf, waiting for her to tuck her third boy into a wooden cradle; she attached a couple of straps to the smooth crossbar, installed a wooden pipe into a special hole between the baby’s swaddled-together legs, then inserted her son’s little appendage into the pipe so that the urine would flow straight into a pot placed on the floor under the cradle.
The baby frowned, twitched his lips and emitted a muffled bleat. Aida rocked the cradle with her foot, and, signaling me to wait just a little longer, crooned the refrain of the classic lullaby, “Laillia’a-illala-a-a Muhammad-rasulula-a-a-a.” Five or six iterations of this simple song lulled the baby to sleep. I rinsed my plate, and we set off for Amishka’s.
She really was a sight for sore eyes: thin and disheveled, with puffy blue eyelids and no makeup.
“Ami-i-shka,” Aida embraced her. “Why are you still upset! You’re only eighteen. Look at Patya here. She’s turning twenty-six, and isn’t even engaged yet.”
I nodded. Sure, why shouldn’t Amishka take comfort at the sight of an old maid? But she just sobbed bitterly, doubled over and sank to the floor.
“Ama-a-an,” moaned Aida.
“How did it happen?” I went straight to the point.
Amishka’s fiancé had been a fellow student in the university, in the city. They had met casually in the modern way, gone to the movies, had written each other sappy love notes. He’d gone so far as to introduce her to his parents and extended family, and had shown his face here in our out-of-the-way settlement. I was struck that Amishka’s parents had allowed it.
“How did it happen?” blubbered Amishka, lifting her tear-stained face and trembling chin. “The fairy tale came to an end. We dated for a whole year, and now he’s got his diploma and decided to propose to some distant cousin of his.”
“What about your engagement?”
“We didn’t go through that.”
“What do you mean, didn’t go through that? He visited your family! And his parents knew about you.”
“So what? They didn’t give their word, we didn’t put on rings, didn’t pack our suitcases!” howled Amishka.
It was as bad as it could get. I couldn’t come up with anything to say and just gazed in silence at the back of Amishka’s woeful head.
Meanwhile Aida brought the sufferer a glass of water.
“Enough, time to get over it. To hell with him! Or mama will figure it out. Where is she? At Aunt Zarema’s?”
“Yes,” sobbed Amishka. Her teeth knocked against the cold rim of the glass. “She knows everything. She says n
o one will marry me now.”
“What do you mean? Leilashka’s first fiancé broke with her because she didn’t want to take the veil. Didn’t matter; someone else came along. And now she’s married with two children.”
“But she had gone through a formal engagement. And there’s nothing that bad about the veil!”
“What is ‘that bad’ then?”
“Karim said that I was dishonorable. Told his whole family.”
“What did you do to deserve that?” Aida clutched at her head.
“I used to go to his house when no one was home and clean up. One time his aunt caught me there with a broom. She was surprised that there was no one else there. She asked whether my parents knew about it. I told her that Karim had asked me to come over and tidy up. And his aunt says, ‘it’s not your job to clean up at Karim’s; he’s nothing to you yet …’”
“She’s right,” Aida interrupted. “What made you go to his place? It was the aunt that ruined everything.”
“No, that’s not it; he broke it off himself. He’s the one, the two-timing …” cried Amishka.
“Excuse me,” I interjected cautiously, “no question he’s in the wrong, the worst of the worst, but come on: were you really alone with him in his apartment, wearing a smock and sweeping up, and we’re supposed to believe he never even tried to touch you?”
Amishka was silent, wiped her damp face with the hem of her skirt.
Aida joined in. “Maybe you gave him some reason?”
“He said that we would get married in any case,” said Amishka without looking at us. “That it made no sense for him to betray me, given that our parents knew about us. That we had an open and honest relationship. That he had never dated anyone so long. He talked about love. He said that they’d tried to get him to marry his cousin twice removed, but he refused, said we were fated to marry. He even let me smoke the hookah. Said that it was milk.”
“But …”
“But it turned out to be vodka.”
Crushed by what she had said, Amishka got up and limped out of the room. Apparently she’d sat too long on her foot while she was down on the floor, and it had gone to sleep.
“What an idiot!” sighed Aida, her eyes bugging out. “What an idiot!”
My voyeuristic curiosity gave way to an aching compassion. Amishka, whose family had spoiled her from childhood for her blue eyes, pitch-black hair, elegant nose, and graceful walk, had never put on airs, never gossiped or gone behind people’s backs. That’s why I liked her. Any naïve, pretty girl in her place would have yielded to romantic temptation. This big-city Romeo, Kerim, had come out to the settlement and played everyone for a fool, for a whole year, with his showing off. He would have five hundred fifty-five scarlet roses delivered to Amishka, or would send her a note that he had ordered a song to be dedicated to her on the local TV station. No wonder she lost her head.
I followed the devastated girl into a dark room where she lay face down on the large bed.
“What are we going to do?” I asked uncertainly, in a trembling voice.
Aida strode over to us, tapping her heels hollowly on the floor, and issued a command: “Don’t you dare try to keep it secret. If you meet a guy, inshallah, tell him the truth.”
“I’m not going to meet anyone else,” Amishka buried her face into the pillow, and burst out sobbing again.
“What do you mean, won’t meet anyone?” thundered Aida—though I’m sure she didn’t believe it herself. First of all, you could still get Karim back. Threaten him, pin him to the wall.”
“No way! He’ll tell everyone!”
“He’s going to do that anyway.” I couldn’t stop myself. “He’s already proclaimed it to the rooftops that you’ve lost your honor.”
Aida jabbed me with her elbow, sat down next to Amishka and stroked her on the back:
“Don’t be upset, Amishka, it won’t help. There are all kinds of guys out there. There are even some here in the settlement who could care less whether you’re a virgin or not …”
“You’re lying!” Amishka blurted out amid her tears.
“Lying? Take Rusik, who lives across the tracks, the one who takes tango lessons.”
“Boo-hoo-hoo!” Amishka just kept bawling.
“Look at her, ‘boo-hoo!’ Though in this case you’re right; they say that Rusik doesn’t believe in Allah. But there are others, modern, cool guys. But the main thing is, don’t try to keep it a secret.”
“Why?” Amishka looked up from the pillow.
“Well, first of all, Karim might go see your new fiancé and blab everything. Or show a tape. Did he take any videos?”
“I don’t know.” Amishka burst into tears again.
“Well, let’s say he didn’t take any pictures and won’t tell anyone. But then doctors might let it slip.”
“What do you mean, doctors?”
“Just listen … One of our relatives in the city found a fiancée for her son. Everything’s fine, everyone is happy; a month goes by, and she runs into a gynecologist friend of hers. The friend congratulates her and starts questioning her about the girl, where they found her, what her name is. And it turns out that this fiancée was one of her clients, she’d come in for a hymenoplasty. So this relative goes ballistic, rushes home, grabs the fiancée by the hair and throws her out the door. And she was pregnant, though our relatives refused to recognize the baby because they didn’t know whose it was.”
“Did her parents take her back?” I asked.
“Of course not! She had to go to Rostov, or to Astrakhan, to start a whole new life.”
Amishka lay forlorn and crushed. She’d been her family’s favorite; it was hard to imagine her driven out of her comfortable life, without friends or anyone who cared.
“There are some girls,” she said quietly, and haltingly, stopping to swallow the lump in her throat, “like that prostitute Angela. They run around, ride in guys’ cars with practically nothing on, spend all their time in night clubs, and then, as though nothing happened, they put on a veil and become someone’s second or third wife.”
“Don’t judge veiled women based on Angela’s example,” Aida frowned.
“That’s not the point. It’s just that even the worst of them can get lucky. But me, I fell in love, made a mistake. Trusted him …”
I also remembered Angela; she was daughter of a divorced woman who worked as a janitor in the local prison. She was the talk of the town; rumor had it that Khalilbek himself had seduced Angela back in her youth. After that, she passed from one man to another, evidently feeling no shame for her behavior. I had seen her cruising down the muddy Avenue in the back seat of a car full of carousing young men, howling with laughter, or coming back from the city on the main road, for some reason on foot, in a short skirt, smiling alluringly at all the guys she passed, under a chorus of catcalls.
“What, did Angela take the veil?” I couldn’t help asking.
“She did,” blubbered Amishka. “And some big shot crook took her as his second wife, he comes out to visit her sometimes.”
“Impossible!” My thoughts were all jumbled up. “Maybe you should take the veil too?”
“Patya!” Aida was angry. “Astauperulla, what are you talking about? If Amishka covers, it’s not because that slut Angela did it.”
I heard a shrieking sound, and shuddered. Amishka was laughing hysterically, snorting and beating her hands and feet on the bed. She was trying to say something, but we couldn’t understand a word. Aida ran out again and brought some water.
The poor girl calmed down for a second, but then burst into tears again.
“What are you blubbering about? Stop howling and tell us. I have to get back to the baby,” Aida chided her.
Amishka buried her face in the pillow again, “It’s just that I think I’ll have to be part of a hard sell, forced on men as a bonus. Or, like Sidratka, remember her?”
“What Sidratka?”
“What, you don’t remember her? They lived
at the station. Her elder sister was gorgeous, but Sidratka was cross-eyed, scrawny and hideous to look at. Though basically a nice person.”
“And?”
“And so these matchmakers come from Khasaviurt, they’re after the elder sister—the pretty one. But on the day of the wedding the bride’s mother switched her out for Sidratka, because no one would have taken her otherwise. She was under the bridal veil, and so they didn’t notice anything.”
“So then what? Did they send her back?”
“No, they left her in Khasaviurt. The mother-in-law taunted her for five years, until she gave her a grandson. She was a kind person, and ultimately they got used to her, came to love her. And now supposedly her husband treats her like a queen.”
“So you see,” I smiled, “a happy ending.”
“And in general,” Aida turned serious, “some people have real problems, Allah forbid. Compared with them yours isn’t worth shedding a single tear over.”
“Easy for you to say, Aida. And meanwhile my life is ruined.”
“Stop it, Amishka; remember Zaripat?”
Of course I thought of Zaripat. In the past, she had been a singer, well known in the settlement, and not least for her unrestrained behavior. Zaripat had been known to stay out late in the city, in a restaurant, and to leave in a car with an admirer, but she had a real talent and people appreciated it. A few years ago, this singer had married an observant Muslim man who wouldn’t let her sing, perform, or even listen to music. She gave up wearing low-necked dresses and wore only shapeless garments, and started having children, one after another. And became completely domesticated.
“Haven’t you heard?” Aida interjected. “Zaripat was diagnosed with cancer and now she’s in the hospital, at death’s door.”
“What about her husband?”
“He’s in prison now; after you left he was arrested for extremism.”
“Oh, right, my mother told me about it.”
“So anyway, he’s in prison now, and she’s on her deathbed. Think of the children, ama-a-an. But that’s not all. Can you imagine what she did? Just a couple of days ago … the whole settlement is talking about it.”
Bride and Groom Page 6
