“What gang?”
“The knocked-up girl’s brothers. And her mama—the filthy-mouthed old witch—she seems to have given us the slip, too.”
“So the marriage is off?”
“No shit. Though who knows … Listen, I had something else to tell you. What’s up with that girl Patya?”
“The one you introduced me to? Nice girl, sincere. What’s up?”
“Well, she’s dating that wrestler guy.”
“What wrestler guy?”
“Timur, from the youth committee. He told me himself. So be on your guard.”
“If they were dating, she wouldn’t have given me her number.”
“What, she gave you her number just like that?” Shakh gave a whistle. “Be careful with that one. Her brother made a bad marriage. Shacked up with this girl, then went and married her. Totally henpecked. Patya, too, she’s friends with that fool Aida.”
“Not the Aida who had the hots for you all that time?”
“That’s the one. And they also have this friend Amishka. Barely out of high school, she took up with some guy, and the entire town knew about it. Some hotshot from the big city. No matchmaking, he’d just show up with some flowers, that’s all.”
“So what?”
“So what? He lured this Amishka to bed and then dumped her, the guys say. Hilarious! She resisted at first, but he goes, ‘Come on, just let me in half-way.’ Ha ha, so as not to damage anything. And then …”
“That’s enough, Shakh, I’m going home. I’ve got work to do.” Marat waved him off wearily, and began to shake hands with Shakh and the other men who were lingering nearby. His father had already gone ahead, but guests were still emerging from the restaurant. Some stopped to whisper to one another, others went around the corner, and still others got in their cars without exchanging glances with anyone and drove off.
Several girls skipped out of the kitchen exit on the side of the building. Behind them came Luiza’s niece with the vapid eyes, embracing Abdullaev’s tearstained bride, with her mournful, drooping curls.
When Marat got home, both his parents were already there. His mother still had her best dress on, and the phianites still sparkled in her earlobes. She paced back and forth on the veranda, swollen with emotions like an overfilled tire. His father sat over his notebook writing some report for work.
“Vai, vai, Marat,” his mother repeated. “What’s going to happen with the Abdullaevs now?”
“Why worry about it, what does it have to do with you?”
“You heard, didn’t you? You heard the curses raining down on their heads? And what a day for it! You know what caused it all, don’t you, Marat?”
“That’s their problem.”
“No, it’s ours! Luiza’s niece is the cousin of that poor girl, Abdullaev’s fiancée.”
“But the curse has nothing to do with her, don’t worry about it!”
“Are you joking?’ his mother stopped. “Do you think that it’s easy to be related to such a family? Of course Abdullaev’s fiancée, of course, has nothing to do with it, but still, it’s pretty bad. She has been demeaned, shamed, and cursed in front of everyone.”
“Who demeaned her?”
“Her fiancé! Don’t pretend that you don’t know. That hag’s daughter is expecting his child. She’s some student type. Turns out no one knew about it, but now it’s all come out in the open. If we were to become related …”
“Related to whom? What, are you proposing to marry me off to Abdullaev’s fiancée?”
“Astauperulla,” his mother recoiled. “What mother would approach Abdullaev’s fiancée now? Her entire family is now cursed. I was talking about Luiza’s niece!”
“What made you think that we were going to get together?”
“What do you mean?” His mother collapsed onto the nearest chair. “You danced with her for such a long time! I thought …”
“Mama, forget about Luiza’s niece, I have no use for her, got it?” Marat couldn’t restrain himself.
“Why are you yelling at your mother?” His father looked up from his scribbling.
“I’m not yelling. I just don’t need anyone foisted on me.”
Marat made straight for his room, to his computer. He had to get in touch with his Moscow colleagues, to see what was happening with the case of the human rights activist and to go over some documents, but Shakh’s warning whirled around in his head. So Patya was dating some pompous blowhard named Timur. Impossible. She was way too smart for him.
Then he had another thought: of course Shakh would badmouth Patya; he didn’t want Marat to prefer anyone over his cousin—Sabrina Shakhova.
But Marat immediately rejected the thought: “No, he himself called Sabrina a dragon.”
His hand reached out on its own volition for the phone, to dial Patya’s number, but froze in midair: “It’s only been one day, it’s too early to call. She’ll think that I’m desperate.”
And Marat turned to the computer screen fully intent on forgetting about Patya, at least for now.
Meanwhile, Luiza’s niece, having seen Abdullaev’s grieving bride home and sent her off to the bathroom to clean herself up, lingered alone in the foyer. She smiled into the tall, gilt-framed mirror on the wall and tried out some poses, then rounded her supple shoulders and started quietly singing a popular song that she’d heard yesterday at the concert for Khalilbek:
You are my ray, my light,
Full of fire and might!
Tu-tu-tu, tataram…
Before the party erupted in scandal, her aunt had hinted to her that the guy with the intense eyes who had danced with her was in quest of a bride. His name was Marat. He had looked right through her! She had seen him again when she and the other girls were leaving the restaurant, and again he had given her that look. So that was it, he was in love! True love! And his mother, Khadizha … she was always so friendly, so thoughtful. Something was about to happen, for sure. Something marvelous, full of enchantment …
Luiza’s niece sank into a reverie. She began planning her wedding in her mind. There would be two ceremonies, of course. The first one, “the bride’s,” would be just for her relatives and parents, and Marat would come with his groomsmen. The second one, “the groom’s,” would be the next day, and would be more extravagant. The “bride’s side” could not attend this celebration; the only people there would be the bride’s sisters, cousins, and closest girlfriends, and a couple of men serving as delegates representing her family.
On the first day, she would wear a golden dress, with a corset and glittering gemstones in her hair. The second day, her dress would be show-white with a silver belt, and she would wear a long veil like in that magazine … She would get a henna tattoo and have her eyelashes permed. He’d pick her up in a cabriolet. And the groom would definitely wear cufflinks. She would just die if her papa didn’t hire the very best photographer and invite a dance group in leather slippers. She would make her entrance into the banquet hall, with her two-meter veil trailing behind her, and everyone would gasp! Banknotes would rain down onto her high, baroque hairdo (note to self: don’t forget to make an appointment) …
The bathroom door slammed, interrupting Luiza’s niece’s fantasy. She assumed an expression of sympathy and prepared to resume her task of comforting the freshly washed former bride. But the girl was no longer crying, and showed no sights of distress. She just went over to the window, under which a stray cow was lowing nervously, and sighed audibly:
“All right, then. It’s better this way.”
“Indeed it is,” Luiza’s niece confirmed.
“Um-bu-u-u-u!” the innocent cow chimed in.
7. NEIGHBOR WOMEN
I laid low for several days. I imagined Timur’s spies lurking behind every corner and at every crossroads. The moment I crossed the threshold, the streets would close in around me, seize me, and deliver me into the hands of my detested tormentor with the blond crew cut. He called several times a day, demanding that I mee
t him; he shifted to threats, and from there moved on to tender babbling and endearments. He was definitely brewing something ominous.
Aida came to visit me with her two elder sons, whose heads were flattened in the back from so much time in the cradle. She let it slip that Timur had already approached her and asked for advice on how to win me over. Aida claimed to have told him to back off. Obviously, Timur had not gotten the message.
“It’s your own fault, Patya!” Aida chided, rewinding her turban from left to right. “You shouldn’t have corresponded so much with him from Moscow. Why did you even agree to meet him?”
“I didn’t know what he was like!”
“She ‘didn’t know.’ Well, now you do, so it’s time to reap what you sowed. Of course he figured that if you wrote to him and answered his messages, that meant you want to marry him …”
I was desperate to talk things over with Marina, but she was on vacation somewhere in Bulgaria. Would I get to see her? Would I even go back to Moscow at all? Mama had already put her foot down and said no, no Moscow for me, not for all the tea in China. In Moscow, I would completely forget how to make khinkal, I would go stale and shrivel up into an old maid.
“Soon you’ll be twenty-six! No one will take you, even for free!” she would nag.
Papa noticed that I was holed up in my room, and offered to take me to the city:
“You have girlfriends from university there, don’t you? Uma, Masha …”
How had he even remembered their names? I did have friends there, but one of them had gone to the mountains for the summer to drink spring water, wander around alpine meadows, and breathe the thin, wholesome air. Another had rushed off to serve as a volunteer organizer for that very youth forum that Timur was so worked up about. I prayed that he would be whisked away to the forum too, and I would be rid of him. But this was not to be.
When his relentless calls brought no response, Timur sent me a terrifying message:
“You will be mine, come what may!”
I pictured myself kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a car with a sack thrown over my head. It rattled me so much that I went into the front room to sit with Granny and listen to the “magpies,” the neighbor women who had come over to shell a gigantic pile of pumpkin seeds. Why they would be doing that, I didn’t even bother asking. My parents were out. Papa had gone to a demonstration that had been hastily organized in the city to advocate for Khalilbek’s release. Mama, who cursed and condemned this enterprise, had decided at the last moment to tag along, not to the protest, of course, just to visit friends in the city. Maybe the Magomedovs.
The neighbor women sat on the sofa in their cheap cotton robes that looked like nightgowns. They hunched over a mass of seeds that had been spread on mats the floor, picking through the white pumpkin husks and spouting the most arrant nonsense to Granny in a wild mix of Russian and our native language. They were discussing amulets. The imam of the mosque on the Avenue scratched secret formulas in Arabic ligatured script on slips of paper, which he folded and whispered prayers into. Then he sewed them up in leather triangles, attached a string, and sold them off to the locals as charms to protect their children.
“My son,” babbled one of the neighbor women, “was taking a final exam in school. And he had forgotten his amulet, had left it in his backpack. He’s sitting there in the classroom. His telephone is under the desk. And I’m out in the schoolyard with the textbook. He texts me a question from the test, but my answer refuses to send. Then he remembers about the amulet. He explains to the teacher that he has to get it out of his backpack. He gets it out, hangs it around his neck, and—bingo!—receives my answer.
“So he passed?”
“Vababai! Of course he did!”
“Did you hear what happened with the Abdullaevs?” asked another of the neighbors, bugging her eyes out.
Everyone ooh-ed and aah-ed and shook their heads in their multi-colored kerchiefs.
“I was at the engagement ceremony, I heard all those curses! A simple sabab amulet has no power against something like that!”
We already knew that our neighbor had been present at the scandalous event. She had spread the news around the entire district practically the moment it had occurred. She had come to our house as well, rushing in all flushed and breathless. She had been wearing a gold-embroidered scarf that sparkled in the sunlight; it had not been tied crudely at the back of her head like her everyday one, but was pinned fetchingly on the sides into flower shapes. It gave the effect of a fancy formal hairdo, only with the scarf instead of hair.
“Not just anyone can undo a curse,” Granny announced, with some authority.
“You’re so right, so right,” nodded the women.
“But what exactly happened there? Why did they crash the engagement ceremony?” one of them, a silver-toothed woman sitting to the side, asked in a nasal voice.
“Wa, didn’t you know? He got some city girl pregnant, and it was her mother who barged in. They say that the girl is a real prostitute!”
“What a nightmare!”
“Astauperulla …”
“What a disgrace …”
“The Abdullaevs are related to our mullah, didn’t you know that? It’s no good that they have something like that going on in their family.” Granny smacked her chops.
“Or maybe young Abdullaev was created to test girls’ powers of resistance!” suggested the one who had helped her son cheat on the exam, without the shadow of a smile. “He makes a point of tempting them: the strong ones turn him down and preserve their honor, the weak ones give in. So it’s that pregnant girl’s own fault. Instead of throwing curses around, her mother should have spent more time setting her daughter on the right path.”
“So true, you’re so right.”
The silver-toothed neighbor noticed me. “Patya, why are you sitting around at home? You should go into the city.”
“Oh, don’t go now,” objected Granny. “There’s a demonstration going on today for Khalilbek.”
“Oh, of course, you’re right.”
“Papa went,” I interjected.
A white steppe butterfly fluttered into the front room, did some flips in the air, and alit on the window, where it flattened its wings out against the pane.
“Do you know,” the older of the neighbors lowered her voice and whispered conspiratorially, “what people are saying about Khalilbek …”
“People will say anything.”
“Have you heard about him being a saint?”
“Who said that? Where did you hear that?”
“My husband told me, and he heard it from people in the know, that barakat flows out from Khalilbek’s cell in prison, even into the neighboring cells. Do you remember that Wahhabi who was imprisoned for spreading extremism?”
“Zaripat’s husband?”
“Yes, that’s the one, that Zaripat who used to be a singer and who got cancer.”
“But she died!”
“May her sins be washed away.”
“She died. But Khalilbek’s grace came down onto her husband, and he was miraculously amnestied and released. When he got out of prison he learned that Zaripat had sung a song before she died. And Wahabbis do not allow music, they don’t recognize it.”
“May their intestines be torn apart in the afterworld, the thugs,” muttered Granny.
“So, anyway, he learned that his wife had sung a song and had even recorded it …”
I joined in: “I heard that it was really beautiful.”
“Everyone’s heard it. People sent it around. She sang like an angel, as though the illness had left her body at that moment.”
“And what did he do?”
“He cursed her memory, abandoned the house, and left for Turkey, taking the kids with him.”
“How could they have let him in with his criminal record?”
“It’s a complicated system. The children went separately, with his sister, and he managed to finagle a way there via Ukraine, like a lot
of people do. Anyway, they were already expecting him in Turkey. Everyone who was on the official surveillance list here and unable to follow the religious requirements because of police harassment has managed to get set up pretty well there. After Barishka’s son was held in the Sixth Department and investigated for extremist ties for five days, he took off for Turkey. Same with the Isaevs’ son. They’ve started up a business there, and they follow halal law. Once they decided to become observant Muslims, they found they couldn’t live normally in Russia. They needed to go live with the people who shared their faith, so they wouldn’t have to violate their laws.”
“Let them go, then, devil’s spawn, savage beasts that they are,” Granny grumbled again.
“So Khalilbek is some kind of saint simply because his neighbor in jail got released early?” I took the conversation a couple of steps backwards.
“What do you mean, Patya? He performs all kinds of miracles, that’s what people say.”
“But he can’t get himself released?”
“He must not want to yet.” The older neighbor lady rustled the pumpkin seeds with her hand. “But there’s a demonstration today, which means that they’ll let him out soon. Don’t you remember the kind of people they had performing at the concert? Deputies, leaders … That Borisov fellow. Famous singers. All for Khalilbek … people are saying that he’s Khidr, a prophet.”
“Khidr!” Granny repeated reverently.
“What do you mean, Khidr? Explain it to me!” I asked.
“How can you not know Khidr? He’s a holy man, servant of God, teacher of Musa.”
“Wait, I’m not following. By Musa do you mean Moses? But he lived thousands of years ago!”
“But his teacher is eternal. His name is Khidr. And he can manifest himself in any form. But mostly he’s in green.”
“Wait, you’re telling me that Khalilbek goes around in green clothes?”
“That’s not important. What is important is he’s wise, very wise.”
“But if Khalilbek is the magical and immortal Khidr, the wise teacher and all that, then why did he murder the investigator?” I pressed on.
“Shhhh, Patya!”
Bride and Groom Page 12
