The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  “Because there’s no two ways about it,” continued Nadya Stepanovna, “it might take a long time by train, but it’s much safer! This way, you get to see just how far it is to this Baku of ours. The arsehole of the world, as they say.”

  “Have you always lived there?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. I went there many years ago. Now, however, I’m not sure we’ll be staying there for long. There’s much to be afraid of, there.”

  “Why is that?” Nazar showed interest and pretended to be surprised. It wasn’t that he was ignorant of what was going on. Since they had given him instructions to go there, he had come to know almost too much about what was happening in Azerbaijan. But it was one thing to read about it in official reports, and another to hear it from an ordinary person.

  “What do you mean why? They’re beating people up,”

  Nadya Stepanovna announced in a matter-of-fact tone, as she picked up the crumbs of her sandwich from its greaseproof paper.

  “Excuse me, but who is beating up whom?”

  “It is well known who… The Azeris are beating up the Armenians, and God knows what else… The Armenians have already started to leave. For instance, a mechanic called Vitaly Melkumian and his wife were neighbours – lived on our own landing – and one morning I go out and there’s a lorry in the courtyard, loaded with their chairs and mattresses! Moving house? I say, and where are you going?

  Away from here, they tell me, we have relations who live near Yerevan – we’re going to stay with them. Sure… they haven’t touched the Russians yet, but who knows? After all, the Armenians are Christians just like us, while those others… you know! Then there are soldiers on the streets with machine guns – mere boys who get frightened at the slightest thing and could just start shooting. And do you know what else they have come up with? There’s a curfew…

  This means that you can’t go out in the evening after midnight. But in Baku in the summer, midnight is when it starts to cool down and so we go to eat on the beach, and to dance! I’m not so old, I like to go dancing, and then, would you believe it, there are young lads who come along and ask me to dance. Their eyes are shining with excitement: men, we all know, are hunters! Away with you, I always say, can’t you see that I’m old enough to be your mother? At this stage, my life is pretty much over: I just live for Rafik, and he is already thirteen years old, and it won’t be long before he’s going dancing. I still like it though: you work all week and on Saturday you want to get out and have fun. But now there’s nothing. From midnight you’re trapped in the house.

  I’ve got no idea how this is all going to end up.”

  She went silent only because someone was knocking at the door. They had to get down from their couchettes, as the female guard had come with the sheets and pillows. Nadya Stepanovna went to the washbasin in the corner, and busied herself with the taps.

  “I knew it! There’s never any hot water, the bastards.”

  Only a dribble of yellowish water came from the tap.

  “Listen, if I don’t get to wash my hands, later when I wake up in the night, I’ll feel like I’m covered with the smell of cheese! No really…”

  “You’ll excuse, Nadya Stepanovna,” Nazar resumed the conversation while the woman was making the bed, “I know there’s a curfew, but I thought that things had quietened down. Of course, there were those… incidents, what’s the name of the city near Baku?”

  “Sumgait,” Pushkareva replied quickly.

  “Well, I did hear about the beatings there, and if I remember correctly, there were even a few deaths, but now, according to the television, they have stopped these acts of aggression.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, they might have stopped, but for how long? I’ve heard my neighbours with my own ears: in Sumgait, they say, the Armenians got what they deserved, and that was just the beginning. Well really, the others are a fine lot, too! The Armenians, I mean. What were they thinking of, with all the business about that Karabakh of theirs? It would have been better if they had just kept their traps shut. So of course, I’m not very happy about leaving my family on their own down there. My mother is sixty, and the boy can’t look after himself… So I’ve done everything in two days, a hell of a lot of work! There was this consignment of electrical cable, you understand, I can’t remember how many kilometres: if it isn’t delivered, the factory grinds to a halt. Do you know how many ministries they have made me visit? You have to apply, they say, to the Ministry for Rubber By-Products, and when you get there: No, you have to go to the Ministry for Electrical Energy. Oh yes, they had me running all over the place…

  Now, it seems, they have promised. The first deputy minister has signed, and they’ll send off our cable immediately. We’ll see! Hey,” she yawns, “what do you say? Shall we switch the light off?”

  The judge agreed with some relief. He was not usually very communicative, especially with strangers, and now he was getting a little worried that sooner or later Nadya Stepanovna would ask him why he was travelling to Baku.

  Even explaining it to his wife a few days earlier had not been easy, and he had in fact tried to tell her as little as possible.

  Why cause her worry? As far as Asya was concerned, it was just another investigation, even though it wasn’t an everyday occurrence to investigate the death of an ayatollah, even for a judge attached to the special affairs branch.

  Initially she just couldn’t believe it: an ayatollah? Hold on, just run this past me again. Like Khomeini? With a beard and a turban? Yes, but one of our ayatollahs, a Soviet one.

  We have them too? What a country! And Nazar patiently explained that yes, we also have ayatollahs or rather, in this particular case, we had one… Because, of course, they had killed him, this Pashayev, president of the Islamic Council of Transcaucasia, the most influential cleric in the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan – and not with a potion or a poisoned ointment, as in The Thousand and One Nights, but with knife blows or, to enter into all the details, his throat was slit in the middle of the street. Nazar had preferred not to mention the political implications of this affair, but Asya had started to worry anyway. In fact her anxiety was communicated to Misha. It’s true that while the parents were talking, he was eating his porridge and didn’t seem to be listening, but as soon as he had finished demolishing everything on the plate, he looked his father straight in the eye and hesitantly asked, “Dada go way?”

  Nazar leant over him and replied solemnly, as though speaking to an adult, “Yes, Daddy is going away. For a few days. Dada is going to Baku.”

  “Ku?” Misha repeated, “Ku?” It immediately appeared that the new word had calmed the child. He repeated it as though he wanted to savour it on his tongue, and then went off on all fours to the bedroom.

  He returned dragging a teddy bear by its ears, and insisted on sitting him on a chair. Once he had succeeded, he sat and contemplated it for some time with a thoughtful air about him. Who knows what he was thinking of, and what the miracle brought to his mind: a bear sitting up and not falling down, not falling down… Eventually, however, he went back to his father and pulled at his jumper:

  “Dada Ku?”

  Nazar burst into laughter. What do we have here? A lambkin who cannot even speak and has only just learnt to stagger around on his legs, and learnt so late that Asya was getting cold sweats: no, no, it’s not normal… But it is normal, indeed it is better that way. He has understood everything:

  “Dada Ku?”

  “Yes, daddy is going to Baku.”

  “Cumba?” the child asked gravely. Nazar suddenly felt ashamed at having laughed, and when his eyes met Asya’s, he realised that she too was experiencing that same, indefinable shame. No, it wasn’t a silly question; only an idiot could laugh at Misha. He is facing the unknown: everything could happen, the world is magic on a colossal scale, there is nothing to laugh about…

  “Yes, daddy is coming back.”

  So now it had been said, that was what would happen.
>
  This Ku would not take his father away. After this, it seemed that Misha had forgotten the whole affair. He grabbed the teddy bear by the ears and went to the bedroom dragging it behind him. After all, how long can a baby of not even two years be expected to worry about something? But a moment later, he was back and rather subdued, conveying a sense of mystery to his parents. With a troubled air, he looked under the chair and then he turned to his mother, “Di-bare?”

  Asya had complete command of his language, “No, the teddy bear isn’t there.”

  Misha studied her with a mischievous air, “Ku?”

  What will he come up with next? thought Asya; you would think that he could not understand, and yet…

  “No, teddy bear isn’t in Baku.”

  But Misha was not going to give up, “Ku!” Until Nazar crouched down in front of him and, looking him in the eye, said, “So that’s it; the teddy bear has gone to Baku, am I right?”

  Misha triumphantly nodded that he had. “Di-bare Ku!”

  “This,” Nazar continued coolly, “means that he is coming back.”

  He got up, went into the bedroom and came back holding the teddy bear by its foot. The principle had now been demonstrated: those who go to Baku also come back. But the question had still not been resolved, because the windmill, although small, had cogs that just kept turning and grinding new flour all the time.

  “Me too Ku!” the child declared with conviction.

  Well of course, thought Asya, he wants to go to Baku as well, given that it looks like everyone is going there: grownups and teddy bears. There was nothing for it: it had to be explained to him quite clearly that little kids can’t go to places like Baku…

  The judge woke up with a start and raised himself to a sitting position. Daylight was pouring in from the window and the train was hurtling across a dusty plain. Curled up under the blankets, Pushkareva was sleeping in the other couchette. Nazar jumped down from the bed just as he was – in pyjamas – and set off for the restaurant car. He could only find a place at a table where two men were already seated, one wearing a red cotton cap and striped pyjamas, and the other flowered pyjamas. The latter, however, was also wearing an unbuttoned military jacket with the epaulettes of a lieutenant colonel in the artillery. The officer and his neighbour in the cap had ordered a plate of hot tripe in garlic and were sprinkling it with mineral water, while occasionally knocking back great swigs of some liquid contained in a perfume bottle; clearly it had been filled with vodka. Nazar tried to order his favourite soup, solyanka; what better way to start the day? You fish around for the meat in the soup with a spoon and the steam fogs up your glasses… It turned out, however, that in spite of solyanka being clearly written on the menu, they did not actually have any. The only available soup was borsch, and what’s more, made from beetroot. What can you do? He ordered, and even though it turned out to be watery, he found it a satisfying meal. If nothing else, it was piping hot, just how he liked it. Feeling the stomach full of hot soup, that’s what gets the muscles moving. There’s no way round it: anyone who was a child during the war years carries around this craving for soup – hot soup – for the rest of their lives. Nazar was eight years old in 1945, and another couple of years went by before there was enough to eat… While he was cleaning his bowl with a piece of bread, his fellow breakfasters offered him a swig of vodka, which Nazar refused because he had noted that the bottle was small and the other two, clearly for the same reason, did not insist.

  When, however, he had devoured the last piece of bread, he accepted the offer of mineral water. He had, of course, called the waitress to order a bottle for himself, but she had curtly told him that there was no more water. There was nothing else to drink except apricot juice, but who could drink apricot juice with their borsch?

  “Excuse me,” said the lieutenant colonel, “allow me to introduce myself: Krylenko.”

  “Serov,” echoed the man in striped pyjamas.

  “Lappa. Are you also on your way to Baku?”

  “Ye-es, Baku,” replied Krylenko happily, as he chewed on his tripe.

  “So what’s a tour of duty there like?” Nazar asked. Serov replied instead of Krylenko; clearly he too was an officer, although seeing him in his pyjamas, it was difficult to believe it.

  “What’s it like? That’s easily answered: once it was sheer bliss! It’s hot down there, as much fruit and vegetables as you want, and you can swim in the sea as late as October.

  Now, they’ve gone and RECONSTRUCTED everything.”

  Nazar clicked his tongue to express agreement. With such people, we all know, it doesn’t pay to enter into arguments; you have to express complete agreement with them and, in any case, they would never be open to persuasion. Besides, they can occasionally be decent people…

  “Now,” Serov continued with his mouth full, “there’s a curfew, and soldiers are advised not go out in the streets on their own, but only in pairs. Do you understand? Here in a Soviet city! That’s the fine legacy they’ve bequeathed us.”

  “Indeed,” commented Lappa, “a curfew to defend Soviet legality. Am I right?”

  Then Krylenko butted in, pushing away the empty plate that still smelled of garlic and leaning across the table with clenched fists, “You mean to defend our own people, the Russians! Because there are some scoundrels who are openly talking of having the Russians meet the same end as the Armenians, and the police do - not - ar - rest - them!”

  While the lieutenant colonel was speaking, Pushkareva, having finally woken up, came into the restaurant and there were no free tables. Lappa signalled to her with his hand, “Nadya Stepanovna, please, over here at our table!”

  She hadn’t changed after her night on the couchette, her hair was a mess and there were bags under her eyes, but the three of them looked at her with interest. What was it about her, with her large nose and dyed hair? Perhaps it was just that, the tacit invitation transmitted by single women who are beginning to age: I will not say it, but I really could do with a man… Krylenko got up and went off to get a chair from the other end of the restaurant car.

  “Please make yourself comfortable!”

  The introductions were repeated, and then Serov addressed the new arrival in a very formal tone.

  “What are you having, Nadezhda Stepanovna? The tripe is excellent!”

  “No, I – in the morning, you’ll forgive me, just a cup of hot milk. Actually, I wonder if they have any chocolate. I shouldn’t really – don’t want to put on weight! But it’s so good! Are you too living in Baku?”

  “Yes,” the officers announced, but Nadya Stepanovna had not waited for the answer.

  “You know, I live at the Partisans of Peace; that’s where they gave us an apartment, but I don’t like it. But then, what can you do? I tried to get it exchanged, but I couldn’t find anybody. There’s three of us, granny, Rafik and myself, and he can’t sleep with me; he’s too big now; he’s thirteen.”

  “Surely not,” Serov’s surprise was exaggerated, “Nadezhda Stepanovna, you have a thirteen-year-old son? I can’t believe that; you’re far too young – a young woman!”

  “A young woman, really!” Pushkareva laughed contentedly.

  “No no, I am a mother with the responsibilities of a family, and I have brought him up on my own… Well, my mother gives me a hand, as good fortune would have it. And he is everything to me.”

  Nazar hid his exasperation. The little woman was beginning to irritate him. “But what are you saying, Nadezhda Stepanovna,” Serov persisted while scratching the back of his neck; he had even removed his cap. “Believe me, your life is all ahead of you!”

  “And so we’ve come to a pretty pass,” Nazar turned to Krylenko, “having the Russians… How did you put it?”

  “We’re not yet at that stage, but that’s where we’re going to end up,” the lieutenant colonel muttered darkly. “When I think of all the rubbish they told us for years and years: brotherhood, they said, between peoples… And now: where’s the brotherh
ood now? I’ll give you brotherhood, and down come the blows…”

  “But who was doing the attacking? Was it really only the Azeris?”

  “The Azeris were handing out the violence. And not just with bare fists, but with iron pipes. In Sumgait they brought out knives and petrol cans… They say that in Armenia, the opposite happened, and that there, they killed the Azeris.

  Who knows? They even said it on the television. But look, is it the kind of thing you should be talking about on television? And yet we all saw it and not just in Baku, but from Moscow on the pan-Soviet television, a deputy chief prosecutor comes along and announces that two teenagers were killed by Armenians in the city of Ghapan. And then the following day, he’s back on television: he forgot, he says, to make it clear that the two boys were Azeris! What a cretin! Or perhaps he did it on purpose, who knows? And that guy is supposed to be working at the Chief Prosecutor’s Office! We’re in the hands of complete fools!”

  Nazar prudently went quiet. At work there had been considerable debate about the statements released to the television by Deputy Prosecutor Katushev, and still no one could quite understand how he could have been so stupid.

  He had allowed himself to be manipulated, that was clear, but by whom? Get to the bottom of that one!

  “And those people,” Krylenko was now getting carried away, “had been waiting for nothing less! Our brotherly peoples, of course! Turks! They’re all Turks! We defeated them at the time of our forefathers, and they weren’t too happy about that, of course. They had to obey: lower your head before us Russians! And then suddenly there’s socialism and brotherhood, and the Turks, now fancy that, are no longer Turks, but our people – Soviet people! They just told us a load of rubbish!” “You know, I too live at the Partisans of Peace,” Serov revealed.

  “Really? Then we’re neighbours,” said Pushkareva, brightening. “And you live… with your family?” she enquired.

  “Well if you can call it that: with my daughter. I too have brought her up, let’s be frank, on my own; my wife, God rest her soul, died long ago. Here she is,” he added and took out his wallet. “This,” he pointed to a woman with back-combed hair as they used to wear it in the sixties, “is my late wife, and this is Yelena,” he concluded, showing her a passport photograph in colour.