Bride and Groom

by Alisa Ganieva

  They started off toward the field of swamp sedge that began beyond town, stopped at the last house, Elmiuraz’s, and knocked at the shiny, freshly scrubbed gate. A homely woman in a housedress came out to meet them, holding a broom. She collared a little boy who was tooling around the yard on a tricycle and delegated him to show the guests into the house. Marat and his mother followed the child into a room cluttered with furniture and children’s toys.

  “All right, then. Don’t you worry about the fee, it’s already been taken care of. I’ll go now, and later you can tell me how everything went,” his mother whispered to Marat, and she left, mission accomplished.

  Marat began to wait, sneering internally at the whole enterprise. No one showed up to greet him. A young woman passed through the room several times with a bawling baby in her arms, paying no attention to Marat. Then the child pattered in again in his bare feet and stood in the corner, where he gaped at Marat, silently mouthing a lump of sugar. When Marat tried to strike up a conversation, the boy ran away.

  Finally, Elmiuraz himself appeared. He was a feeble, narrow-chested man with unshaven cheeks and sweatpants ripped at the knees.

  “Salam alaikum,” he greeted Marat quietly, “I’ll make some coffee.”

  Marat looked around for a Turkish coffee pot and a gas burner, but Elmiuraz unceremoniously took a jar of instant coffee off the shelf and stabbed the button of an electric tea kettle with his hairy finger. Evidently, it had just been used; the kettle immediately started gurgling, then turned itself off.

  The fortune-teller spooned some instant coffee into a cracked cup, poured hot water over it, and slid the cup over to Marat.

  “Go ahead and drink it. I’ll be right back.”

  He disappeared again. Marat shrugged and obediently sipped at the scalding swill. On the other side of the wall, the baby squealed and fussed. The homely woman came in from the yard, dumped a pile of dry, not yet ironed laundry onto an armchair, and vanished without a word. Several more minutes passed, then Elmiuraz reappeared. He shuffled in with his back hunched over, sat opposite Marat, and waited for his client to polish off the contents of the cracked cup.

  Marat finally finished his coffee and triumphantly extended the empty cup to the psychic. Of course, there was no residue on the bottom and sides, just a faint discoloration. But Elmiuraz closed his eyes and overturned the cup onto the saucer.

  “Um …” Marat began.

  “Wait!” Elmiuraz raised his index finger into the air and, eyelids still closed, whispered a string of unintelligible incantations.

  Then he took the cup in both hands, lifted it to his nose and, exhaling, “Bismillah, Bismillah, Bismillah,” fixed his gaze on the pale brown edge of the coffee stain. A minute or two passed. A cuckoo sprang out of the wall clock and chirped, bouncing on its spring. On the other side of the wall, the baby resumed screaming at the top of its voice.

  “I see a blind figure,” Elmiuraz finally uttered.

  “A blind figure?”

  “Yes, holding a set of scales. The goddess of justice. She stands between the present and the future. She seems to be leading you forward.”

  Marat immediately understood that his mother had already established a relationship with the fortune-teller. He clearly knew everything there was to know about the law office.

  “Glasses … Put on dark glasses when you’re going outside, to meetings, it will help ward off the evil eye.”

  “All right …”

  “Ahead of you the road splits in two. A choice … Either you’ll have a wedding very soon, with a good girl …”

  “Or?”

  “Or some kind of incomprehensible emptiness.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Only you can know the answer.”

  “Great. What else?”

  “Be sure to take care of your health, or you’ll have problems in old age.”

  “Aha, brilliant. What else?”

  “Do not expect great wealth, though you will not sink to the bottom. The long road will bring joy. A celebration. I see two rings joined together.”

  “So, which is it to be, two rings or emptiness?” Marat asked, squinting, not without guile.

  “Two rings, with emptiness inside. It might mean that you need to get married as soon as possible. And, also, a model of the Universe: space, the planets, Saturn …”

  “Why Saturn?”

  “It’s the star of your own personal fate. Now …”

  Elmiuraz covered his face with his palms and again mumbled some prayers. The baby’s squealing ceased immediately, as though it had been chopped off. The homely woman appeared again in the room, this time with an iron, trailing its cord along the floor. Scorning the sacraments underway in the room, she clattered the ironing board open, turned her back to the fortunetelling, and started in on some wrinkled duvet covers.

  “I see a number, another number … Thirteen, eight … Bottles of wine, the sea or the ocean. You are to be a stranger wandering the world, simply passing through. You are to die before your death.”

  “Huh?”

  “Bismillah, Bismillah, Bismillah. You will meet a teacher. You will acquire a girl.”

  “A girlfriend or a wife?” Marat decided to follow along. He cast a sidelong glance at the woman and her spluttering iron.

  “Both.”

  “Meaning, someone I haven’t met yet?”

  Elmiuraz thought, then spoke:

  “If you haven’t found anyone yet, then, inshallah, you will in the very near future.”

  “Of course, I figured that,” Marat snickered.

  Suddenly, a buzzing, remote-controlled toy jeep invaded the room, followed by the child that Marat had seen earlier. The woman set down her iron and yelled shrilly at the boy in a language Marat did not recognize. The child stamped his bare feet in protest. The psychic was unperturbed by the commotion around him. He just rolled his eyes and resumed his chanting.

  While Elmiuraz was soaring around in the astral sphere, a clamor arose outside on the street. There came the sound of women wailing, along with the excited babbling of teenage boys in their newly acquired low voices. Elmiuraz snapped out of his trance. Hiking up his sweat pants, he rushed out to find out what was going on. The barefoot boy followed, slapping his bare heels and occasionally letting the jeep drop with a clatter onto the floor.

  The homely woman shouted something after them, but then abandoned the iron on the ironing board’s grating and shuffled outside herself. The wailing on the street intensified. Marat figured there was no point in staying there by himself, especially when the young mother reappeared from the inner rooms and hastened to join the crowd outside, complete with her bawling nursling.

  Marat ran out too. There he beheld the Elmiuraz clan interrogating a cluster of agitated women and teenagers, whom, evidently, he had never seen before. He blurted out:

  “What’s going on?”

  “They say that someone was killed on the Avenue. A guy from here.”

  “Who?”

  “They said he lives ‘across the tracks.’”

  The young mother jiggled the baby, who had stopped sobbing and was now making little grunting noises.

  “Probably the mosques going at each other again.”

  “This morning, at the crack of dawn, I heard voices saying, ‘Something is going to happen this afternoon.’” Elmiuraz, directing this last utterance to no one in particular, scratched his stubble and looked downward, onto the dark earth, Then he raised his eyes to his client, as though anticipating an expression of awe or further cross-examination. But Marat just distractedly extended his hand to the psychic:

  “I’ll go and see what’s going on over there. Thank you for the coffee.”

  “One does not say ‘thank you’ after a session, or what is fated will not come to pass,” mumbled Elmiuraz.

  But Marat had already rushed off. A shaggy band of teenagers in dusty athletic shorts trailed after him.

  The Avenue was at the other end of
town. A crowd of rubberneckers had gathered along the streets leading to the scene, and an ambulance maneuvered through them, occasionally having to back up. Marat immediately spotted in the crowd a couple of the “Red Army” redheads, Gamid and Roma. Spotting Marat, Roma skipped the prelude and jabbered:

  “It’s Rusik, Rusik-the-Nail! They just took him away. He’s dead—the doctors didn’t make it in time!”

  “What?” Marat gasped.

  He had seen Rusik literally just the other day, pedaling to the city on his bike. Rusik had been in a bad mood, had complained about the local proselytizers who had latched onto him and wouldn’t leave him alone:

  “They came the day before yesterday, they came yesterday, they came today … ‘Look,’ they say, ‘do you think the people around here are real Muslims? For them it’s just a word. They steal, they drink, they turn living people into idols, they hobnob with kafirs, and they’re fixated on miracles.’ They say that people have made Khalilbek into some kind of holy man. They say, ‘You’re not like that but you will become mired in your disbelief. Come to our mosque, just once …’ Blah, blah, blah, you know as well as I do. They don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘no.’ Won’t shut up! They’re bugging the shit out of me!”

  Marat had invited his suffering friend to go with him to a private beach, to have a swim in the sea. They had agreed to go today, in fact, but now …

  “Can you tell me what happened?” he asked the redheads.

  “That Rusik of yours finally got what he had coming to him,” Gamid stated grimly.

  A young man in a cheap T-shirt who was eavesdropping butted in:

  “Look, brother, here’s the long and short of it. That devil, that Rusik asshole, goes and makes a placard saying that there’s no Allah, and he’s out strutting around with it on the Avenue. Our guys spot him out there. They go over to, like, scope it out. Not to make a real dent or nothing. But Rusik loses it …”

  “So, then they killed him, you mean?” shouted Marat.

  People started to look and gather around. Someone countered from behind, in a cracking voice:

  “No one, like, offed him! It was just a stupid accident. Dude brought it on himself.”

  The voice belonged to Timur, the bruiser from the youth committee. Marat had spent a lot of time over the past few days thinking about this guy in connection with Patya. She hadn’t answered his call. Then Marat had gone to her house, but hadn’t been able to catch her there at a moment when she was outside. The vixen had taken root in his heart, had beckoned to him, and then vanished.

  “What do you mean ‘a stupid accident?’” Marat growled.

  “Mukhtar’s son Alishka goes over to ask about the placard,” the guy in the T-shirt eagerly explained. “But Rusik loses it, gets up in his face. And then the shit hits the fan. They were standing over there, on that square in front of the grocery store. Abdullaev got sucked in too …”

  “I saw them and went up in case I could, like, maybe break it up,” Timur swaggered. “Anyway, so right outside the store there’s this crazy dude with his placard, and our guys are on the other side of the square. Things were cool at first, no pushing and shoving, it was like, you know, they just sort of told him to put the placard away. But the dude starts in with ‘I have the right,’ shit like that. And they were kind of like, ‘No way in hell.’ And, then, like, it’s a free for all …”

  “Were they packing heat?” Marat interrupted.

  Everyone started yelling at once:

  “They didn’t have nothing on them, man!”

  “What do you mean, heat?”

  “Alishka just gave him a little nudge, that’s all.”

  “No, he didn’t! It was Abdullaev,” corrected Gamid. “And then the idiot slipped and slammed his head down on the concrete.”

  “It was his own fault, it was a total accident!” Timur concluded.

  For a second it seemed to Marat that they were messing with his mind. This whole stupid thing couldn’t possibly be true.

  “Marat, believe me, they’re not shitting you,” Roma babbled. “No one offed Rusik. They’re normal dudes, they just got pissed that he would do stuff like that. Rusik even got up again after he fell, ask the guys.”

  “He was talking, too!” people shouted in the crowd.

  Roma held up three thick fingers:

  “I run up to him, I go, ‘How many fingers?’ And Rusik grins, answers, ‘Three.’ And then he takes a couple of steps and bam! Just konks out on the concrete! We call the paramedics, but he’s bit the dust.”

  “It was Allah struck him down, you know, you could say,” Timur waved his hand in the air, “for not believing in Him.”

  “Hold on, I don’t get it about the placard,” Marat mumbled, looking around to see if there was anyone official nearby.

  A short distance away, a row of policemen stood with their feet planted importantly on the pavement, automatic weapons across their bellies, surveying the scene.

  He started threading his way through the crowd.

  “I’m going over to ask the cops.”

  “You go ahead and do that, and while you’re at it, ask those curs why they took Alishka,” Gamid spit wrathfully onto the ground, “You’re a lawyer, so do something.”

  Marat stopped.

  “Alishka, Mukhtar’s son? They arrested him?

  “Yes, you got here too late.”

  “Well, they did the right thing if they arrested him. Abdullaev too?”

  “Him too.” Roma nodded. “But Shakh is trying to figure something out. They’re going to call witnesses later.”

  Shakh was with the policemen. Marat had not noticed him behind the crowd. He was gesticulating and haranguing an imposing-looking, well-built man of fifty in civilian clothes who was holding something made of poster board, folded in half.

  “Allow me to introduce you. This is Marat, also a lawyer. He’s working on an important case in Moscow. And Marat, this is Colonel Gaziev. You’re neighbors, by the way.”

  “Aha-a-a-a, you’re Aselder’s son?” The colonel put two and two together. He had an indeterminate mountain accent, and slightly mispronounced his words.

  “Yes. And I knew the deceased,” Marat clarified. “Is it premeditated murder?”

  Shakh started: “What are you saying, Marat?” he hissed.

  “Well I’m at this very moment trying to convince your colleague, that yes, it is,” the colonel reported, raising his right eyebrow.

  “Unpremeditated murder, of course,” interrupted Shakh, who had broken into a sweat. “Article 109. All the eyewitnesses have confirmed it. Abdullaev is basically just a witness. He’s got absolutely nothing to do with this.”

  “We’ll figure everything about Abdullaev later, but the second one, Ali Mukhtarov, has been on our books for quite some time,” the colonel squinted and unfolded the poster paper.

  Marat realized that it was the placard.

  He leaned over toward the colonel’s shoulder and read, in thick red oil-painted letters, “I am an agnostic.”

  “Whew, Rusik-the-Nail really outdid himself,” Marat blurted out.

  “They’re right to call it a provocation. He knew exactly what he was doing!” Shakh grinned. “If it comes to a trial, this sign will play right into the defense’s hand. The victim was not in his right mind and was headed intentionally to suicide.”

  “Can you hear yourself? First, you say he slipped accidentally, and now, all of a sudden, it’s suicide?”

  “Wait …”

  “We’ll figure it out, it’s either A or B. Excuse me, I have to go.” The colonel folded the poster board and turned his back.

  “People say the man’s a jerk, but you can’t really …” mumbled Marat, following with his eyes the movement of the shoulder blades plainly visible under the departing colonel’s shirt.

  “What made you take Colonel Gaziev’s side?” Shakh was enraged. “Why did you start in with that stuff about premeditated murder? Have you decided to help me with
my case?”

  “So you’re defending Rusik’s murderers?”

  “You have no idea what happened! You showed up out of nowhere, after everything was over—when there was no longer a body, and no suspects in sight! I can get Abdullaev out, he’s basically got nothing to do with it. Of course when he saw Rusik with that moronic sign, he went up to ask about it. Wouldn’t you have done the same? Then Alishka stuck his nose in it. One thing led to another, and all of a sudden we’re in the middle of a shitshow. What was Rusik thinking? He could have taken a stand on his own turf, ‘across the tracks,’ but no, he had to stir up trouble all the way down here on the Avenue! What is that supposed to mean, ‘I’m an agnostic?’ Are you following me? Neither Alishka nor Abdullaev even know what the word means. All they understood is that he’s badmouthing Allah.”

  “Shakh, the end result is that Rusik is dead. Who’s guilty?” Marat felt a strange sensation of weightlessness, and just blurted it out.

  “What, so now Rusik was your BFF?” Shakh squinted.

  “BFF or not, the guys who pushed him have to answer for it.”

  “Alishka, Mukhtar’s son—let him answer for it, I don’t feel sorry for him at all. The colonel has been after his whole family for being Wahhabis. Not so long ago they dragged Alishka into the Sixth Department on suspicion of extremism, and once someone goes in there, forget it, he’s done for. But Abdullaev … I’ve already sleuthed out how much has to be given to whom to get them to let him off. The family will collect it.”

  “What does he face? Negligent homicide?”

  “Article 109, just what I told you, though that devil of a colonel is trying to slap him with 105, so the two of you are in cahoots. The only hope is the witnesses.”

  “But look at the witnesses, Shakh. The half that goes to the mosque ‘across the tracks’ will come down hard on your Abdullaev, the other half will try to nail bearded Alishka. Either way the judge has to get his cut,” Marat said venomously, rubbing his throbbing head.

  “Gotta go, Abdullaev’s old man is calling,” Shakh barked. He took out his ringing phone and stepped away.

  The crowd hadn’t yet dispersed. They lingered, shifting from one foot to the other, chattering. Marat caught sight of Ismail, the school director, standing with Timur, who was practically jumping out of his skin trying to convince him of something. Marat had had enough. Hoping to slip away unnoticed, he walked past the cordoned-off concrete square in front of the store—where Rusik had been killed—and turned down a filthy alleyway. At that instant he heard a sharp whistle and stopped short. He turned and saw a woman wrapped completely in a shapeless garment, with only her oval face and hands exposed to the sun. She was laughing.