People spread the utterly absurd and fantastical rumors about a double with particular conspiratorial zeal, if not full confidence in their validity.
“How did they come up with that? Who did they hear it from?” Marat’s father grumbled. “What a crock!”
It turns out, Khalilbek had been seen in the city park, playing chess with the regulars who populated the benches there. And at the market, too, where he was spotted expertly weighing out figs. And in a fishing boat at the abandoned shoreline with some local teenagers, their skin burned dark from the sun and permeated with sea salt. And at the morning khutbah in the mosque “across the tracks.” And outside the “official” mosque on the Avenue, thoughtfully studying the leaflets being handed out there. Here, there, everywhere, even in this very restaurant, where everyone had gathered today to celebrate young Abdullaev’s engagement.
The Khalilbek frenzy swelled like dough on yeast. In the banquet hall, dignified family men exchanged fantastical tales about his secret release and omnipresence, like ghost stories told to frighten children, with a mixture of half-belief and suppressed excitement.
“They’ll see someone who looks a lot like him, then make something up and pass the story around, and it all escalates,” Marat remarked skeptically, raising his palms to shade his eyes from the blinding luminary overhead.
“You’re so right.” A grim, puny-looking guy standing next to him, shifting from one foot to the other, unexpectedly confirmed his theory. “Khalilbek would never play chess.”
“Why not?” His listeners were surprised.
“Didn’t you know?” The puny guy raised his index finger pedantically in the air. “The hadiths forbid the game.”
“Only the apocryphal ones, bro!” countered a hefty mustachioed guy in a fashionable shirt whom Marat knew from school. “It’s not approved, but not forbidden either. The main thing is that the game not distract from serving Allah.”
Several of the men laughed, including a sweaty, pudgy guy of around sixty with a split lip. The know-it-all standing next to him slapped his comrade’s drenched back with the flat of his hand:
“You need to be more careful what you laugh about, Ismail, you’ve got a bad enough reputation already.”
Marat later asked Shakh about this Ismail, who he was and what that thing was about his reputation, and Shakh explained that it had to do with the new school director, who was constantly clashing with the more rabid parishioners. He was having particular difficulty with the ones who attended the mosque “across the tracks.” Ismail refused to admit girls in hijabs into class and required them to wear the prescribed white blouses and blue skirts. The parents of veiled girls were upset, brought suit, and threatened the director with reprisals. His split lip, as Shakh merrily explained, was the handiwork of Mukhtar, a local resident with a teeming brood of children.
“That same Mukhtar whose son Alishka was beaten up by our neighbor, the policeman?” Marat recalled.
“Yes, yes, the whole family is devout,” Shakh nodded.
But that conversation took place later, when the two of them were sitting together at one of the tables and watching the dancers. Guests invited each other to dance by waving a wedding baton, a napkin, or a sprig of dill. At the end of the dance, the baton would be passed to someone else: batons and napkins made their way from hand to hand: boy-girl, girl-boy. Marat managed to exchange disjointed congratulatory exclamations with the groom, Abdullaev, who was in constant motion. He danced a few rounds with his young betrothed, who was dressed in a crimson dress and had her hair curled and fixed in a fancy coiffure on the back of her head. Then he moved on to her friends, ostensibly demure girls representing both his and the bride’s sides. Then he rushed off to discuss something with his friends, then would again invite someone to dance, and then vanish again.
The hostess hobbled anxiously back and forth to the kitchen to make sure that no one was stealing the food, and to see whether the woman who had been hired to salvage the leftovers was cheating as she scooped the uneaten chudu and mutton chops into plastic containers. Back in the hall, she waddled between the guests’ tables, waving her fringed scarf and inquiring after her son:
“Now where has our groom gone again? Given us the slip, has he?”
As far back as Marat could remember, she had had trouble walking. One time she had climbed up onto the roof of her house when it was under construction, to keep an eye on the workers, and had fallen and injured her leg. Shakh also kept showing up and then disappearing. The faces of former friends and classmates flashed by. People questioned Marat about his law office and his escapades in the city. They asked:
“Do you have a special someone in Moscow?”
Marat laughed off the question. Individually or in groups, people were called up to the microphone, where they expressed warm wishes, well-meaning advice, and identical, monotonous toasts. They predicted a throng of offspring to the poor bride, as many as ten or fifteen kids. In the middle of it all, Marat’s mother, decked out in her finest, with elegant earrings shaped like flowers with tiny phianites—”Let everyone think that they’re diamonds!”—came up to Marat from behind, arm in arm with a bleach-blond woman in a leopard-print evening wrap.
“Marat, say hello to your Aunt Luiza!”
Marat greeted the woman and even managed to recall the names of Luiza’s children and husband.
“Feast your eyes.” Marat’s mother addressed the leopard print-clad lady, shaking her head with the braids tucked up in back. “They’ve turned the matchmaking into a whole wedding! Remember how things used to be? It would all be done quietly, in the family. They would bring a suitcase of gifts to the prospective bride, would give her gifts, work out the necessary details, and that would be it. Now look! Now you rent a restaurant, and there are so many people, it’s like the hajj.”
The leopard-print lady nodded and clucked.
“But all right,” continued Marat’s mother. “The bride is such a marvelous girl. And the groom—a fine falcon, isn’t he? I remember how he used to come running over to our house when he was a little boy. Adik really loved him.”
It was a lie. Adik had not liked Abdullaev at all; on the contrary, he had been afraid of him, but Marat did not protest, especially since his mother’s voice trembled perilously when she mentioned Adik’s name.
“Hey, look, there’s Luiza’s niece!” She perked up and poked her chin significantly in the direction of the dancers. “What a beauty, look how she moves! So graceful! And her waist? Thinner than my finger!”
“Stop it, Khadizha,” the leopard-print woman laughed, “Don’t slander my niece. She’s not at all thin! Or bony! She’s a good eater: healthy, strong. And she has a bright personality.”
“What did you hear me say, Luiza? Did I say she was bony? Muishka, the Gadzhievs’ daughter, now there’s a bony one, she’s like the walking dead. And her hands are so delicate. What can you do with hands like that? How can you cook? I bet she can’t even open the oven door. Now that niece of yours is an absolute delight. Allah grant any woman a daughter-in-law like that.”
Marat watched Luiza’s dancing niece without the slightest interest. His mother’s effusive compliments were not inaccurate. He liked the girl’s figure, though he couldn’t make out her face. Her long hair, which reached down to below her waist, kept spilling onto her chest and across her cheeks, which were red with cosmetics. He recalled Patya’s almost childlike, intelligent face, and felt warm inside, and, at the same time, a little sad.
“Invite her to dance, Marat, go on!” his mother whispered, as she got up and headed off to the women’s tables with Aunt Luiza in tow.
Marat lazily observed the girl as she went back and sat down in her seat, in a conspicuous place next to Abdullaev’s bride. On the tablecloth lay a pink rosebud that someone had left there, with petals that were already a little worse for the wear. He picked it up by the stem and made his way over to Luiza’s niece.
She noticed someone coming her way, and immedia
tely became engrossed in her late-model telephone. Deaf and blind to the world, she energetically tapped the touch screen with her manicured fingers. When Marat extended the bud to her, she put down the phone and rose slowly, looking not at Marat but at the smiling girls sitting next to her and at Abdullaev’s bride, who, as you could see from up close, was still just a young girl, with a thin angular profile.
Luiza’s niece turned out to be an exemplary partner. She glided gracefully across the restaurant’s filed floor, tracing all kinds of loops and fancy moves in time with the brisk music. Marat sensed that she stayed with him longer than the two or three minutes considered decent. Though of course it could have been that time had slowed down.
“Do you know anything about that girl? The one I was dancing with just now?” he asked Shakh, who showed up in his former place immediately after the dance.
“I do. She’s really full of herself. She likes luxury, though her family isn’t all that wealthy. In short—a fool. What, do you like her?”
“My mother does.” Marat smirked. “And she can dance. But her face …”
“It’s obvious at one look that she’s an airhead. Girls like that used to drive me wild. Now they just bore me: been there, done that.” Shakh fussed with the water bottle. “Marat, Abdullaev is a little spooked. That girl he knocked up has been calling him all day.”
“And he …?”
“Doesn’t pick up. But she texted him. Said he’s going to be sorry.”
“So she’s threatening him?”
“Yes. He’s already asked me whether he can get rid of her somehow through the courts. Accuse her of blackmail.”
“He could, but then she would claim that she was seduced or even raped, that he got her pregnant and then abandoned her. And then they could do a paternity test …”
“There might be some other way out. But the relatives of that tramp could show up here and ruin everything. Can you imagine the disgrace?”
“What is Abdullaev doing about it?”
“He wants to cut off access to the restaurant, so as to head off her posse, which is marching this way in a righteous wrath, so to speak. Will you join us?”
“If he asks me himself. It’s his private business, after all …”
“Cut it out, Marat, don’t be such a Rusik-the-Nail!”
“I don’t feel at all sorry for Abdullaev, he got himself into this mess. If I go with you, it’s only to ensure that his fiancée’s special day won’t be ruined. Though she’s bound to find out one way or another.”
“The main thing is for her to learn about it after the wedding, not now. His parents would be devastated. They worked so hard for this!” Shakh turned serious.
“Le, salam,” he was interrupted by a red-headed guy Marat had already greeted on the porch. He was one of five carrot-topped brothers. In town they were known as the “Red Army,” and each one had his own name: Red Army Rashid, Red Army Farid, Red Army Gamid, Red Army Saigid, and, simply, Roma, the youngest one. That was actually his name: Romeo. His sentimental mother had chosen this name for her fifth son; she herself was just as orange-maned, and had enjoyed local fame in the distant past in an amateur theater in a mountain village. Her husband had forgiven her this weakness, though the locals grumbled that he should have been renamed Ramazan.
The “Red Army” soldier who had interrupted them was this very Roma. He sat down at the table and poured himself a glass of vodka, chugged it down, and chased it with a bite of salad.
“Sure you can handle it?” Marat smirked.
“Shut up,” Roma’s temples twitched. “You should have seen how much I drank at our Gamid’s wedding …”
“But Gamid doesn’t drink!” Marat was taken aback.
“You’re right. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t dance, doesn’t listen to music. Basically, instead of a wedding we had a mavlid for him.” Shakh was there, he knows. But not all the guests were like that. Guys like to have a drink. Anyway, right in the middle of the mavlid, people started sneaking outside to gather in little groups in their cars and drink secretly from plastic glasses. And then they’d go back in as though nothing had happened. When Gamid found out about it, he went berserk, believe you me!”
“What did he say?” Shakh bared his teeth and popped a grape into his mouth. “I hadn’t heard anything.”
“Don’t even ask! He didn’t catch me, but he smelled cognac on Father’s breath and really gave him an earful. He said that we’d ruined the whole wedding … But hey, where did our groom go with his guys?”
Roma was obviously clueless; he knew nothing about the dark cloud that hung over Abdullaev, a menacing stew of vengeful brothers and a spurned girl with a belly swollen with sin.
“What, have they gone already?” Shakh stood up and began looking around anxiously. “Why didn’t they tell me?”
“Le, what’s this all about?”
Roma didn’t get his answer; the monotonous buzz of congratulatory toasts suddenly gave way to a strange rasping sound. Marat glanced at the dance floor, where he had just been dancing with Luiza’s niece. An old woman with sun-blackened skin wearing a long black scarf stood at the microphone. Baring the whites of her eyes, she croaked ominously:
“I wish the bride and groom as many goats as there are stars in the sky, and as many misfortunes as hairs on those goats! May their clan rot, may their purses and their intestines leak their contents and shrivel up! May the heavens squash them flat, may their souls burn in the flames of hell, may they be wiped away there and rendered to ash! May their children remain unborn, or if they are born, may they bewail the day their accursed father took for his wife their long-suffering mother. May ulcers, the seven-year-itch, worms, seizures, pestilence, and tumors bring them low, may leprosy mar their faces, and may their limbs rot in Siberia! To the groom I wish impotence, shame across the land, and a lifetime of gout! May your mother weep over you eternally, may your father grow out his beard in mourning! May the columns and beams in your house topple to the ground, may the roof cave in on your head! May all decent people spurn you like a pestilential cur, may you be driven from hearths, wherever you go! May you be a homeless vagabond and a stranger, may you lug your belongings on your back, may you rot away behind bars! May not earth, nor sea, nor sky bear you on themselves! May the mountains hurl you from their saddles! May you be betrayed a thousand thousands of times over! May your soul be spit into, as you spit into the heart of my innocent daughter! May you know no happiness from this black day forward!”
The curses rained down, and for some reason no one attempted to tear the microphone from her wrinkled hands. Abdullaev’s fiancée sat ashen, her lips wide open in shock. Luiza’s niece, in contrast, covered her mouth with her hands in horror. Abdullaev’s parents stood motionless in the aisle, and the guests exchanged stupefied glances.
“Who is that? What’s going on?” Roma-Romeo babbled, gaping at the woman in black.
“Must be the mother of that girl, the one he knocked up. Snuck in here with her curses. And where’s that mutton-head?” Shakh, who himself had been momentarily paralyzed, managed to utter.
“Knocked up? Le, come on, guys, tell me what’s going on!” Roma persisted.
“To your descendants, if they are to be, I wish cystitis, colitis, poliomyelitis, rhinitis, otitis, stomatitis!” the sun-blackened hag cawed on.
Abdullaev rushed into the restaurant with a bunch of friends.
“Grab the microphone!” he shrieked. “She’s insane! I don’t know this woman!”
“Call EMS! Call EMS!” Marat heard another shriek—this time his mother’s.
“The bride’s mother is feeling sick,” Shakh clarified, peering over at the women’s tables.
At last everyone launched into action. The men wrested the microphone out of the hag’s hands, and the women began dragging her off to the side. Once caught, she put up no resistance, but when they loosened their grip, she broke away and raised her finger high into the air. Threatening the entire gathering with her up
raised finger, she stalked through the crowd and vanished through the main entrance.
“Catch her, catch her!” cried Abdullaev’s mother.
Meanwhile, the tamada jabbered into the microphone: “The celebration continues, we resume. Pay her no mind!”
Shakh ran over to the groom and brought back an update: the pregnant girl’s brothers had been caught just outside town and had been rounded up by Abdullaev’s closest friends, but they either had not dared to touch the girl’s mother or had not recognized her, so she’d been able to make her way into the hall unhindered.
“Don’t leave, dear guests! Pay no heed to maniacs! I hereby announce a rousing Lezginka, just for you!” The tamada endeavored to soothe the shocked guests.
The hall filled with loud music, but no one ventured onto the dance floor. The bride had fled sobbing to the restroom, and all her bridesmaids rushed in after her, perfumed handkerchiefs at ready. Her mother had been administered heart drops and brought back to consciousness, and she and the bride’s scowling, bristling father were consulting with the aghast Abdullaevs, who were yellow with shame and disbelief.
Marat’s father came over and hoarsely declared, “Listen, things being the way they are … We’re better off staying out of it. The bride’s side is breaking off the engagement. Let’s go.”
“Is everyone leaving?”
“Your mother may stay, but that’s up to her. There’s no point in men getting mixed up in this scandal.”
The music thundered on. The guests, buzzing like bees in a hive, closed in around the hosts of the ruined celebration and listened to young Abdullaev’s heated explanations. His bride still cowered in the restroom. Marat decided to leave with his father.
As they went down the porch stairs, talking under their breath with the other meekly retreating guests, Shakh rushed up to Marat. He was all in a lather:
“Are you leaving? That’s fine, there’s not going to be a fight anyway. Our idiots let the whole gang of them escape.”
Bride and Groom Page 11
