Bride and Groom

by Alisa Ganieva

  “All I know is that he can show up in any form. Like a bug, for example, so long as it’s green.”

  “Why green?” smirked Marat.

  The secretary smiled at him and tipped her head back triumphantly.

  “That’s what the legend says. Khidr helps people, but they usually don’t appreciate it. They think he’s crazy.”

  “But how does that make him like Khalilbek?” Irina Nikolaevna gave a hollow laugh. “No one ever thought Khalilbek was crazy; I sure didn’t!”

  Everyone started talking at once about the good deeds, fine mind, and general grandeur of Khalilbek. His generous donations, useful initiatives, his vision, full of love for the people …

  “He helped children, too! Children!”

  But amidst the general tumult there again came the sound of a nasal sneeze, and the rubbery man shouted indignantly:

  “You could at least hold your tongues around Aselder!”

  The women fell silent and exchanged embarrassed glances. Of course they knew that Khalilbek had been involved in Adik’s death, the boy who had been their Aselder’s illegitimate son. But in the heat of the conversation they had completely forgotten that fact.

  “Khalilbek is not a saint, and we all know this. He has human blood on his hands,” added the rubbery man amid the general silence. “And I’m not only talking about Adik.”

  Marat’s father lowered his eyes and nodded. Marat felt awkward; why even bring up this private family topic?

  “Who is this Adik, anyway?” asked the secretary tactlessly, but no one answered.

  Instead, the people sitting in the office began whispering among themselves. Rumors began to make their way around the room, phrases spoken in hushed undertones:

  “That special investigator …”

  “And the director of the meatpacking plant …”

  “And the Information Minister …”

  “And that wise mufti, and the chief of the investment foundation …”

  As Khalilbek’s presumed victims were enumerated, they multiplied and came to life. If all these people were to be lined up in ranks, they would have made up an imposing, variegated, mournful-looking regiment of wealthy men, politicians, and deputies enrobed in all the trappings of power. Awkward, modest little Adik would have brought up the rear, Marat’s neighbor Adik, who had met his end under the wheels of the ill-fated jeep.

  Marat stood up and headed through the din to the rubbery man, to shake his hand and say goodbye, then to his father; with a nod, he paid his respects to the women, and finally flung open the door to leave. But there in the doorway stood a large mongrel dog, quietly wagging his matted gray tail. The dog’s broad shaggy nose featured a roundish emerald-colored patch in the shape of the Australian continent.

  “A-a-a-h!” squealed the secretary, leaping to her bulky feet and trying to duck under the table. “It’s Khalilbek! Khalilbek! He’s been listening in! He’s keeping track of us!”

  “Marat, don’t go any closer, he’ll bite you!” shouted the dark-complexioned woman with the bright lipstick.

  “Don’t touch him, Marat,” his father’s alarmed voice echoed hers.

  Everyone panicked and stared bug-eyed at the monster.

  “Don’t be afraid! It’s just disinfectant! Someone poured it onto his nose!” explained Marat, bending over the dog, who kept on calmly wagging his tail.

  “Who let him in here?” said Irina Nikoaevna, jangling her bracelets. She had calmed down slightly.

  “Damned if I know,” spat the dandruffy man.

  The secretary abandoned her efforts to crawl under the table, anxiously sidled up to Marat, and stared intently at the dog with her round eyes, encircled by black mascara lashes. Marat did not want to stand next to her. There was a danger that if he let down his guard, he might fall into his mother’s trap. Marat picked up a piece of sausage wrapped in paper that was lying on Irina Nikolaevna’s table and used it to lure the dog down the hall and then outside. The dog sauntered good-naturedly along after him, though without any particular enthusiasm. In the Institute’s courtyard, Marat tossed the sausage on the ground and the dog immediately poked his green bristly nose into it.

  Meanwhile Patya texted Marat that she had gone with her pack of mountain relatives into the city to “make the rounds of the tukhum” and wouldn’t get back until late that evening. Who knows, she could be right here next to him, breathing somewhere just around the corner, in someone’s cramped apartment, or driving at this moment past the Institute in the back seat of her father’s car, squeezed in between a couple of lively aunties. Marat heaved a sigh and was overcome with a sudden feeling of despondency. Then he recalled Rusik again, who used to ride his bike from the settlement to the city, even in the fall, when the mud made the road nearly impassible. He might have even ridden along this street. He had worked near here.

  While Marat was crossing a busy street, his phone rang unexpectedly. It was a colleague calling from Moscow with bad news. There had been a raid on their law office by people who, some sources said, were tight with the police. They had burst in and changed the locks. Undoubtedly they would dig around in their papers, looking for any evidence they had against the higher-up who had ordered the murder. It was a catastrophe. Marat had to drop everything fly to Moscow immediately, to help try to salvage any documents they still had.

  “Did you provide an official written statement to the police?” Marat questioned his colleague.

  “Yes, but the boss says that if we make a fuss, then they might shut us down completely, and could even come up with something to arrest us for.

  After their conversation, Marat spent some time wandering the busy streets and cracked sidewalks, trying to gather his thoughts. He came upon a cacophonous wedding cortege, emerging from around a corner in a long procession of cars. Laughing young people leaned out the gaily beribboned windows.

  Finally he flagged down a private car to take him back home. He rolled his window all the way down and opened his mouth wide to breathe in the dry, pungent wind blowing from ahead. The car passed charcoal braziers and refrigerators that people had taken out to the roadside to sell, gas stations with prayer rooms and tire-repair shops.

  At home Marat went online and changed his ticket to Moscow to the next available flight. He scrolled through the news reports to see if the raid had been mentioned, but there were no details, just some basic facts: “cordoned off,” “occupied,” and “refused to comment.” He texted Patya about it, and spent the next few minutes in suspense. No answer. He dialed Shakh. Shakh answered in a distant, altered voice that he was in the middle of trying to get Abdullaev released and couldn’t talk.

  Marat rattled around the house for a while, then went outside. He decided to stop by Angela’s, to apologize for his rudeness the other day. He had been unkind to her after the incident with Rusik. The cause of it all was the whistling kettle that would not boil. But Angela’s gate was closed, and his frantic knocking was to no avail. An old woman, a local, shot a sly, inquisitive look in his direction as she passed by, then darted to the other side of the street.

  When Marat got home, his mother was already back, clattering dishes and silverware in the kitchen.

  “How were things at the Institute?” she asked anxiously.

  “Nothing special …” mumbled Marat darkly.

  “Did something happen?”

  His mother tossed a pile of washed forks to one side, strode over and stood right in front of Marat.

  “Nothing at all, Mama, calm down. There are problems at work, I had to change my ticket.”

  “When are you going back?”

  “Friday.”

  His mother gulped and resumed her work with the forks.

  “So that’s how it is, off you go, anything to get away. And your father and I are knocking ourselves out trying to arrange things for you.”

  “Mama!”

  “You didn’t tell me how you liked the girl.”

  “What girl?”

&n
bsp; “Marat! At your father’s office! The beautiful energetic one.”

  “Enough, already, with that girl of yours. I’ve got a full-on crisis in Moscow and here you are meddling …”

  “Me, meddling?” Marat’s mother huffed, and turned angrily to leave. But she reconsidered and went on the attack with renewed energy:

  “Don’t even think. I know all about yesterday. You are playing a dangerous game.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Zarema told me all about it. You really scared her daughters-in-law. Showed up in their café with some girl, attacked a cleric from the mosque.”

  “Don’t make me laugh! ‘Scared them,’” groaned Marat.

  “Do you understand what you’ve done? There are going to be rumors about you now, like there were about crazy Rusik! Just you wait, they’ll tie you up and drag you off to drive out the djinns.”

  “‘Drag me off!’ A lawyer! Just let them try,” Marat snapped.

  “Not only will they try, but they will catch you and drag you off, and I won’t be able to do a thing. Because you’re acting like a maniac. And who was that babe you were with in the cafe?” his mother bombarded him with words.

  “Don’t call her a ‘babe,’ Mama. And if you go into hysterics, I’ll leave.”

  Marat collapsed onto the sofa and stared up at the whitewashed ceiling. His mother poured herself a glass of water, sprinkled in some valerian concentrate and downed it in one gulp. Then she sat down on a chair next to Marat and inspected his high, faintly wrinkled forehead.

  “All I want is to help you get set up in life, Marat. Go to Moscow, work things out there, and come back. We have the banquet hall reserved for the thirteenth … You know, Luiza is driving me crazy. She goes, ‘You promised my niece a fiancé. So where is he?’ Her niece is on pins and needles. She likes you.”

  “Yes, I’ll go to Moscow and then I’ll come back,” stated Marat, without listening. “And you’ll have your wedding on the thirteenth, just as you planned. So don’t worry.”

  His mother warily twisted a thick knot of hair from one side to the other:

  “What? Marat … I’m so glad! So you like the girl?”

  “Yes, but not the one from Papa’s office. And not Luiza’s niece either.”

  “Who, then?” His mother dug her fists into her knees.

  “The one who was with me in the café yesterday.”

  “A-a-a-a-h,” she darkened. “I found out about her. Zarema filled me in—who she is, where’s she’s from. Her father is a simple worker. And he worked for Khalilbek as a mechanic. Remember the police investigation of Alik’s death?”

  “I do. And?”

  “Well, your lovely girlfriend’s father protected Khalilbek. Said that Adik himself had run into the street. Helped hush everything up. So there’s no way you can marry her,” concluded his mother, folding her hands together tightly.

  “So we’re going to cancel the banquet hall reservation?” Marat got up from the sofa.

  His mother’s chin trembled, and she burst out sobbing. Great round transparent drops spilled down her cheeks. She drew a handkerchief out of her robe pocket and blew her nose into it noisily.

  “Adik! Vai, Adik! Vai, Adik …”

  Hysterics, then. Marat went out onto the porch, put on his shoes and headed onto the street. And there he beheld that same Colonel Gaziev. As before, the colonel was in civilian clothes and had bent over to inspect the bottom of Adik’s former car, which he had bought on the cheap along with the house.

  “Assalamu alaikum!” he straightened up and greeted Marat. “Here you have it, just another day at work for the defenders of the fatherland. I’m checking to see whether there are any wires, or whether there aren’t any wires …”

  “What, are there always wires?” asked Marat, realizing that he was talking about explosives.

  “Depends. But this looks clean, it can be started up.”

  There was so much Marat wanted to ask. Where to begin? Adik? Rusik? Khalilbek? The war between the mosques? He hesitated a moment, then asked:

  “What about Rusik’s parents? Do you know where they are?” “They left with their daughters. Immediately after the funeral. They decided not to stay here.”

  “So there won’t be any blood revenge?”

  “Against whom? Abdullaev’s son is in jail. The other one, the extremist …”

  “Alishka?”

  “Yes. He’s been arrested too. They can’t take revenge against the whole settlement, can they?”

  “But they’re raising money for Abdullaev,” Marat mumbled, as if to himself, without looking at the colonel.

  “So you’re worried? You want him to be thrown in prison? What, were you friends with the victim?” the colonel asked in his peculiar accent.

  “We did spend time together,” said Marat, fending off the question as usual, but then added: “Or, well, you could say that we were friends. Rusik was completely honest with me. It was hard for him across the tracks.”

  “He should have come to see me, should have written an official statement, with details, like, who, what, where: ‘they’re trying to recruit me into an illegal, armed organization.’ And name names. How about you—can you give me some?”

  “No,” Marat interrupted him. “I don’t know any names; you know far more than I do about all this. No one was trying to get Rusik to go into the woods and join the partisans. They just talked about religion.”

  “That’s where it all starts!”

  “And? In the other mosque, on the Avenue, it’s just the same. People going around with pamphlets. Miracles, djinns. How is that any better?”

  “The ones from the Avenue are normal. Their Islam is traditional, what do you need me to explain to you? They don’t want to kill anyone, that’s obvious. And so far, no one has incurred any serious problems from djinns,” noted the colonel, getting into the car and shaking Marat’s hand.

  The colonel drove off, sending back brown clouds of dust. Marat headed towards Patya’s house. She was still “making the rounds of the tukhum,” that was clear, but near the house where this girl, so dear to him, spent the night, he felt himself stronger, and more secure. As though in answer to these thoughts, her answer finally came: “I just read your message, I’m sorry. So you have to leave? For a long time????!” Four question marks and one exclamation point. Patya did care.

  Marat overtook a child on a tricycle. The mud on the road, which had dried in rough waves, made for rough going, so the child was pushing himself along using his feet, shod in rubber flip-flops, a few sizes too big. Marat recognized him: it was the boy from the psychic Elmiuraz’s house. He called out to him:

  “Le, where are you headed?” But the child did not heed him, just rounded the corner and disappeared, as if he had never existed.

  Then the streetlight, which usually was dark, flickered and illuminated the dusk. In response to the light—new, artificial—the crickets filled the air with sound.

  11: HAND AND HEART

  No sooner had I met my prince than he had to leave me. Off to Moscow, where urgent business awaited him, great feats, while I was to remain confined in the clutches of the dragon. My woes multiplied when Mama summoned me into her bedroom, conspiratorially blocked the door, and announced, with poorly concealed joy:

  “You have a suitor.”

  “Who?” I froze.

  “Timur, from the youth committee—his father came over to talk with Papa. He said that the two of you have been in love for a long time. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “They made it all up! We are not in love!” I snapped.

  Mama flashed me a contemptuous look:

  “Here you are, practically an old woman, but you have the brains of a five-year-old. He is a most worthy fiancé, and you led him on yourself. Now, don’t try to weasel out of it, and don’t try to deny it. Lyusya won’t give your brother any children, you at least can give me some grandchildren.”

  “I am not having Timur’s
babies!” And I flew into a tantrum, just like a child. “No way!”

  Mama took revenge by sending me out to the bathhouse with a scrub brush. The work was not only exhausting and boring, but disgusting too, because of the fat wood lice crawling all over the damp walls. I had to snag them with a stick, scoop them off the wall and flip them onto the floor, then drown them by spraying them with water from the hose, which I did with my eyes squeezed nearly completely shut. One of the aunties poked her head into the bathhouse, spotted me at this task, and clucked approvingly:

  “Attagirl, nice work, doing what a good girl should.”

  And off she went, back to the house. I winced. How was it Auntie’s business to decide what good girls should and shouldn’t do? I tossed the hose aside and squatted down on my heels to have a good cry. But the tears wouldn’t come, and that just made everything worse.

  Then we had dinner, just us women, in the kitchen. The cousin had zoomed off again on some business of his own, Papa had been hired by someone to fix a lathe, and the uncle was out visiting friends. The aunties had completely taken over the house, and they babbled nonstop about yesterday’s excursion to the relatives. Who had a baby, who the baby looked like, who died when and at what age. My throat went dry from the sheer abundance of names—all these cousins and second cousins, nieces and nephews, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law on both sides, daughters-in-law, great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, piling one on top of the other like the great Egyptian pyramids.

  I finished my borscht and skulked off to my room, already missing Marat, who hadn’t even left yet, upset that he wasn’t writing me, and thinking that maybe I should write him myself. At that point Mama reappeared and dug her claws into me again.

  “Patya, don’t make a terrible mistake!” she started in. “You’ll regret it your whole life. If only I had married Magomedov when I had the chance and not some hick!”

  “Mama!”

  “Look, Timur earns good money, he has an apartment in town. And he’s building a house here in town, too.”