Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  He retrieved his card and reinserted it in the breast pocket of his suit, still nodding in agreement.

  “But did you receive the WACH letter, Dr. Haydar? That’s what I’m asking.”

  “Of course you are.” Nodding his great head again, he closed his eyes, as if forgiving Burnell for asking. “Feel free to ask, please.” As he spoke, the large man was turning away to seize one of the Korean waiters by the coat. He ordered wine. He suggested cake, which Burnell refused, maintaining his disapproval.

  Haydar tut-tutted a great deal, making a juicy noise of it. “Cake here’s good, never stale as elsewhere. But maybe too sweet for your British taste, possibly? I go to the airport for you but you must come another day. Frankfurt is one place and Ashkhabad another, you understand?”

  “Yes, I’m pretty clear on that point, thanks. I’m also pretty clear that an arrangement is an arrangement.”

  “So what you like to arrange today, for example? Perhaps today we take a drive to Merv.”

  But Burnell had driven with Murray-Roberts to Merv the previous day. The site near the frontier with Iran had much to offer. Burnell had inspected the remains of five ancient cities, dating from several centuries BC, in one of which Scheherazade had spun her tales. Greek Merv, lost in heat haze, was being reconstructed with part-funding from WACH. It seemed as if for once WACH money was being well spent, with a sensible young German manager in charge of the site.

  With a non-committal shrug, Haydar said, “I know Mr. Murray-Roberts, naturally. Maybe he can understand the problems of Turkmenistan, maybe can not. We have like a democracy, but still are problems. We have problems with the army, making wrong decisions. And a trouble in trade nobody understands. Also untrained referees for football matches, similarly.”

  Being unamused was a bore. Burnell decided he must shed, or at least shelve, his annoyance with Haydar. One could hardly resent him, with his great face shining across the table, any more than one could effectively resent Everest.

  “I’m told the same men are in power under President Diyanizov as were in power before the coup.”

  Sweeping this remark away with a broad gesture, Haydar nearly swept away the creamy cake which was being placed in front of him. He fell on it, saying in low tones, scowling at Burnell under heavy brows, “Careful what names you mention… Get to know about immense changes convulsing Central Asia and the republics such as this, and Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, and the rest.” He gave a quick résumé of the civil wars which had been waged in Tajikistan and elsewhere. Such demographic upheavals threatened stability everywhere in the vast region, from Azerbaijan in the west to the Chinese frontier and beyond. “Here we are peaceful.”

  “Also get to know me better, Dr. Burnell. You will find a good man in a sea of imbeciles, unhappily. Take no offense of me. New avenues are hard to open. I’m your man. Not saint exactly, but yet a man.” He wagged not a finger but a whole hand to impress his point. The table shook. “Much liberty has closed down since war with Uzbekistan. I tell you confidentially. Because we have inflation. Archaeological Antiquities Museum is closed down. Now is a museum no longer, but—” he rested his great chest over the table in order to lower his voice further—“instead is a school for sons of mullahs, you understand? So I am out from my job, though I still practice it as best I can. Otherwise, I am also in trade to support myself and my wife, intermittently.”

  When the waiter brought two glasses of a yellow liquid, he drained his glass immediately. Flapping his hand, he told Burnell to do the same: the wine was to seal their friendship.

  Burnell took his glass slowly.

  “Maybe is too sweet for British taste, nein?”

  “So who is in charge of local antiquities? Murray-Roberts thought that was rather a gray area just at present.”

  “Murray-Roberts! What that man thinks! The government, Dr. Burnell, the government is in charge of local antiquities. It pulls down buildings for roads. We must be modern in Turkmenistan and have motorways for camels to travel! Yet we get no money from World Bank, only the excuses of the rich. Of course nothing comes from Moscow… Maybe we walk in the park where we can speak freely? Is not too hot for you?”

  “Not too hot for British taste, no,” said Burnell.

  Haydar smiled as he handed a wad of folding money to the waiter. “Humor is good, eh? There’s quite a lot, nein?” He rose.

  They clattered down the tiled stair, through the swing doors and out into the avenue, where heat awaited them like a dozing watchdog. Haydar said, “You mention the president’s name in there at the table. So I am made nervous. Listeners or spies could consider we plot against him.”

  “That would be ridiculous.”

  “What you think is ridiculous and what I think is ridiculous—different things. For one instance, we speak in a foreign language, nein? The mentality of Central Asia, let me tell you…” They picked their way between units of slow-moving traffic. Haydar’s voice faded back into audibility. “…like a large palace. The hall anyone can enter. Then are various rooms where various people may go. Beyond are more private rooms, allowed to very few. And beyond them, some doors where the handle is never yet turned.”

  “Are you talking about this country or about women?” Burnell asked, but his voice too was drowned out by hooting, and he never received an answer. In any case, he thought, you could apply Haydar’s metaphor to almost anything. Perhaps that was what metaphors were for.

  The park was a pleasant place, abutting an immense building which had once upon a time been KGB Headquarters. A burnt-out gun-carrier stood among splintered trees, reminder of the most recent coup. Small boys played over it, shooting each other in friendly fashion.

  “Soon will be winter,” Haydar said. “One day, heat and summer.” He raised the fingers of his right hand above his head in order to snap them with maximum effect. “Next day, snow and winter. No moderation here, in climate, in politics.” He looked smaller in the open air, his complexion less robust. Old men, bent and solitary, walked among clumps of birches, husbanding their secrets. In their pace was a slack-kneed deliberation, as if they carried too much history on their backs to hurry. Their woolen clothes were greenish with age. Their hands—unless they used a stick—were clutched behind their razor-edged backs. Knowing the direction in which they were bound, they watched the ground rather than the sky.

  “People listen always in cafes. Diyanizov of course pays many to listen. Every chair that fills informs. Not many people speak English here. They are suspicious people, unavoidably. The war against Uzbekistan leaves men suspicious. And tribalism. Every day of the week bristles with its perils. It’s new nations here, Dr. Burnell. Always storms brewing. Old storms in new bottles.” He went into a lengthy discourse about the way in which the evil of listening had been propagated by technological devices; before radio, people did not seriously adopt the habit of listening.

  “Your English is good, Dr. Haydar.”

  “I read English very much. You see, I am not Turkmeni. I come from Syria, at a long distance from here, frankly.”

  A melon-seller with a small stall stood under the shade of an oak. He was dark, and wore loose white clothes and a fez. He tinkled a soft bell to attract attention as Burnell and Haydar went by. Haydar stopped and bought two slices of water melon, passing one to Burnell.

  “We eat not from greed but to be kind to the poor vendor. We get dysentery as reward, probably. We’re among savages. The vendors pump in pond water to the melons to enlarge them, just as politicians do to their speeches. So we’re poisoned. The Turkmeni tribes really are nice peaceful people, but when money runs out, then they start to kill each other. Only in summer. In summer, is easy to die. Winter comes—then it’s too cold to die.

  “Half the year, the winds from the high mountains chill the brain into sanity. But for the other half, the hot dead breath of the Karakum drives us insane. It is in that exhalation, Dr. Burnell, our politics are forged, continually.

  “There’s no justice. Rhe
toric, religion, yes—justice, no. There’s criminality laws can’t stop. Currency—mainly forged. Water—mainly bad. No free press. E-mnemonicvision banned—suppose you got an idea of reality from someone else’s old dream, nein? A dream imported from the West? Ha! Maybe you’d die—or even worse, became a giaur, a German, a Christian. TV government controlled. Nothing bad must be said against Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Lebanon, or Argentina.” He was ticking off the items on his list with a digit aimed in Burnell’s direction.

  “Why Argentina?”

  “Take a guess where the president’s latest lady friend comes from… Yes, it’s Argentina. Medicines—lacking. Poverty, yes—gross. Drug addiction—major. Illiteracy—growing. Population—ditto. Epidemics—rising. And nowhere can I find The Hand of Ethelberta.”

  “Sorry. Who’s Ethelberta?” Burnell had listened with scepticism to Hayolar’s diatribe, the hallmark of a bitter man. He relished a break.

  Haydar looked pained and spat melon pips vigorously into a bush. “You know The Hand of Ethelberta, naturally? By your great ancient novelist, Thomas Hardy. It is one of his best novels, I learn. Here, it cannot be found. Publishers in London and Paris are distant. Not to be discovered in all the stalls of the grand bazaar. Maybe the mullahs pronounce it blasphemous. For over three years I search it. I am homesick for Syria and Ethelberta. Still I say—welcome to Ashkhabad, Dr. Burnell, heartily. At least we’re better than Uzbekistan. It must be a misfortune to find yourself here.”

  They threw the rind of their melons in the direction of an overflowing waste bin.

  “I’m glad to be here. To travel. The horizon’s my home straight.” He’d used the line before. Why, there was even a hope that here he might fill up the well of ten missing years with new experience.

  Three young men and a girl passed by, pushing bicycles and laughing as they went. Their carefree expressions, the happiness they radiated, seemed to give a lie to Haydar’s lugubrious account of the country and people. One of the youths, seeing the older men standing there, called out in a musical voice, at which the others chuckled and threw sympathetic looks at Haydar.

  When Burnell asked what had been said, Haydar told him the boy had been quoting the national poet: “Twenty years of my life have passed. O world, I have not enjoyed you.” He added that it was hard for young people to understand the old might also enjoy life.

  “It’s hard to appreciate another country if you suffer from homesickness, Dr. Haydar. That has never been my trouble.” The claim unexpectedly conjured to his mind a troubling picture of his father’s home in Diddisham and of his own rooms there—and of Laura, his step-mother, the beautiful Laura. Oh, those memories remained.

  He stared down at the parched ground, perplexed at…well, there was everything at which to be perplexed, when you thought about it.

  “You have written to me you need to see the mosque of Mostapha Pasha.” This was Haydar’s first admission he had received any communication from FAM. He went on hastily. “That’s correct. It’s of great interest, historically. The beautiful dome of azure rises on parapets. The mosque is well built of worked sandstone—a rarity hereabouts—and also of bricks in double rows. The date is from the end of the fifteenth century and is famous in all architecture. I shall drive you to it. We will use my elder brother’s car, since he owes me a favor.”

  The offer had come too late. Burnell had visited the Mostapha Pasha mosque. It had been much decayed and was hideously restored, following which decay had set in again. Having removed his shoes, Burnell had entered. The interior was as dispiriting as the exterior. The old mihrab, from which the Koran was read, proved to be a shoddy modern construction built of concrete. Most of the original tilework was missing. Nothing remained worth recording.

  Irked by Haydar’s praise, Burnell said, “It wasn’t to my British taste, Dr. Haydar. Frankly, it’s not worth a prayer, never mind a visit.”

  “Ah ha, your English humor! ‘Not worth a prayer, never mind a visit…’ I will remember it. In any respect, I agree with you. An ugly structure entirely. Built by a Jew.”

  Always alert for anti-Semitism, Burnell bridled at this. He rattled off a lecture about the enlightened Rabbi Moshe Gourits who, celebrating his cordial relationship with his Muslim neighbors, had financed the building of the mosque in 1491.

  Haydar rattled back. “The Jew built in 1498, excuse a correction, not 1491, by the Christian calendar. A year of bad omens. Torquemada died and Savonarola was burnt.”

  “The matter of the mosque is not that it was built by a Jew but that it was restored by Communists and incompetents.”

  A melancholy look was his response. It descended over the great shining face like a shadow. “I am a Syrian by birth, as I said to you, although many years pass since I see my native land. Forgive my simplicity. Jews and Syrians…” He drew a fingernail across his throat so deeply that a weal appeared, and hung out his tongue. This performance he followed with a smile of untrustworthy charm.

  Fearing he had been unjust, feeling, as he often did on his travels—it was another reason for traveling—that he would never understand other people, Burnell said, “Excuse me. I suffer from the heat.”

  “In maybe only a few days, the switch will turn and heat will be gone.” He paused under a large oak. They had strolled a long way from Svobodny. Seating himself, he invited Burnell to sit beside him. From the recesses of his orange shirt, he produced a leather pouch and revealed its contents. Burnell’s own stash was running low. His eyes gleamed. “This flight powder is the consolation for the terrors of the world, Dr. Burnell. It is what in Turkmenistan makes politics in Turkmenistan endurable. Please be generous to yourself.”

  As he inhaled, Burnell came to a complete understanding of the learned doctor’s position. A breathing exercise came to mind. Chuckling, he tried to teach it to Haydar. They lay prone side by side, in the corpse position under the spreading branches of the oak.

  “You breathe in, counting four; hold for eight; breathe out for eight; empty for four. Then again: breathe in for four; hold for eight; breathe out for eight; still for four. Use your heartbeat to count. It’ll slow as we increase the in-hold. OK, here we go: breathe in for four, not too deep; hold for twelve; breathe out for eight; empty for four. Quite still. We’re building to sixteen. More twelves; breathe in for four; hold for twelve out for eight; empty for four. Again…”

  As the carbon-dioxide built in his blood, and apnoea came, he floated upward. The figure of Haydar was a giant balloon beside him. It was immensely tranquil a meter or two above the ground. Along the branches of the oak, ginger ants toiled, as they had been toiling since the days of the dinosaurs. He realized he was wearing a bourkas, the all-enveloping cloak of the Caucasus, which greatly assisted his flight. Scarcely breathing, he and Haydar rose higher yet. The trees below were tawny with late summer, the ground was cinnamon, with lines of little white houses like sugared almonds awaiting the lick of a child.

  The wind was taking them, howling like a wolf at the doors of their hearing, oddly musical, various as fever. They flew. Haydar was galloping and tumbling through the air like a black circus horse. The sky above them, a confection of barley sugar from the smoke of factories, enclosed them like amber. In them both was the glorious knowledge that blinkers had fallen from their eyes: they saw the globe as it was, in all its true beauty, pure as mountain sunlight, yet tantalizingly corrupt, filled with the good, the meek, the unmoneyed, and all who would inherit—and had already inherited, did they but dare to realize it—the world.

  He found it difficult at first to disgorge himself from himself: consciousness was life’s large intestine. Release was always something that had to be learned, over and over. So he clutched one corner of the great dark bourkas. The horselike person clutched another corner. With enormous uproar, exhilarating and slightly metaphysical, the magic cloak flapped and flew between them. Its independent existence—as it headed who knows where to some perhaps hidden aoul somewhere in the
toothed Caucasian mountains—felt vibrant and touchingly real. Though to speak truth Burnell was experiencing anything real through a pair of spectacular question marks.

  He said as much to the cloak, which had assumed the form of a woman, her mane of dark dark hair streaming back in the wind as if to rival nightfall. She had hold of his and the horse-person’s hands. Smaragd eyes smiled from her suede face. Her magnificent breasts hung down, engine nacelles powering their flight. “It’ll take centuries,” she said. “Love your lewd remarks…”

  But who spoke? She was herself a serenade, eerie without being a Valkyrie.

  As they swept along, racing the atoms of the air, wider vistas presented themselves below. Far distant, Ashkhabad was revealed like an ore’s egg, cracked open to spill out its citizens, enabling them to rejoice in the glory of the day, the chiaroscuro of the smog. He heard the tinkle of the melon bell, and insane laughter.

  But who laughed?

  Then the city became still smaller, a pearl strung on the silver thread of its railway line, set in the faded sienna of the desert as if stitched to a great garment, the hem of which was the blue Caspian, trimmed with its sandbanks, distant and evocative as a glimpse of undergarment.

  But whose undergarment? Who asked all the unanswered questions?

  Who if not he was riding the bewitching flier now?

  And there were no politics, just as the dark horse had said. No thefts. No lies. No assaults on the person. No violence or domination. No misery—misery had swollen and popped like a boil, and was still sending a foam of pus through the universe. No war between men and women. No debt or insecurity. No ignorance. Nor were there even Truth and Lies.

  Only Wholeness. A wholeness which embraced Everything in its secret embrace.

  A little unnerving at first! But its immensity soon became custom. As he himself was now absorbed into that great impersonal…

  Adoration? All of Central Asia spun below, answerer of its own questions, the great grand hub the peripheries never knew. Bronze it was, bronze it sounded, bronze it smelt. Yet it was only the buckle glued to the belt of the corpulent globe, that little dowdy middle-parts-of-fortune globe rattling about in the sticks of the sky.