Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  When I visited, I was permitted to enter the inner part of the cave. Imagine a vaginal passage opening into a womb—as you easily can! That’s how it is, narrow then opening out. You crawl over plastic matting, laid over the deep rotting vegetation.

  They keep the lights dim as possible. It’s difficult working conditions. There lie the skeletons. Yes, plural. A second skeleton is being uncovered. Maybe complete. How about that? Which is more astonishing, the bones or the pictograph?

  Of course the archaeologists and the rest have good living accommodations, but I slept under the stars for two nights. The proximity of alien galaxies and those alien creatures lying reposefully (is that an English word?—French reposant) only meters away was enlightening and elevating to the mind.

  Your friend Stalinbrass is still wrecking the Crimea. We have a report his forces have partially destroyed the Livadia Palace, where once the Romanovs gloried and drank deep. Eheu!

  When you are done with those samovars, please come and visit. You would also love the mountains. We can learn together some prehistory—and much else besides. I love you so I quote Valéry to you, “Le temps scintille et le songe est savoir…”

  I’m so impatient to know so much,

  Blanche

  Sighing, Burnell folded the letter, slid it back into its envelope, and put it in his suitcase. Blanche’s presence returned to him with great clarity, and the sound of her voice, and the concerned look on her face when she had visited him in the FAM institution. Her physicality and her intellect were things to cherish—but—but to consider another emotional involvement was beyond him just at present. The airing-cupboard held more revelation than the cave.

  But Blanche’s letter served to remind him that his official work in Ashkhabad was over. He would test out the remainder of Mr. Khan’s Budapest EMV bullets and then get back to the West. Suddenly, the mere phrase “the West,” glowed with promise. After he and Haydar had visited the Friendship Bridge, he would phone through to the airport—no mean feat in itself, he was aware—and book a flight via Istanbul for home.

  He went back to the bed, sat on it, and took a snort of his favorite reviver. Then he reread Blanche’s letter.

  Dr. Haydar was to have arrived with his brother’s car at noon. It was after three when he strolled into the hotel. When Burnell asked him what had delayed him, Haydar said merely that the car would not start—”but the bridge will wait for us.”

  It was hot in the car, even with the air-conditioning working. Yesterday the transport had been small and green. Today, Haydar drove an imposing black Russian Chaika, an up-to-date model. When Burnell commented on this, Haydar said merely, “I borrow it from another of my brothers. This one a rich brother-in-law.” The vehicle gave a noisy ride. Silence fell between the two men.

  “Is not too many miles into the desert,” Haydar said, reassuringly, as Burnell mopped under his collar. He was himself dressed in a beige linen suit, under which was a matching shirt and—incongruously, it seemed—a tie. To top up the image of prosperity, Haydar wore a red carnation in his buttonhole. His ample body loomed over the steering-wheel. The car snorted on its way.

  They came to the roundabout where, on the previous day, Ali Orazov had been setting up a road block. Today, the place was deserted, the road ahead empty. A family of beggars sat under one of a line of wingnut trees. A wind was blowing, whipping leaves from the trees where ragged children played.

  “Soon the weather changes,” said Haydar. “My wife has a family saying, ‘Better the wind to blow in the air; if it blew under the ground, the dead would refuse to be buried.’ ”

  The asphalt gave out. They were traveling over a dirt road with open country ahead. The city lay behind them under a tattered amber smog. Dust, the droppings of the desert, stirred about their wheels. Mountains became visible, their crusty ridges a blue outline in a slatey black sky. It was as if they delineated a country without material substance.

  “Iran,” said Haydar. He changed gear as they headed downhill. “Where the dead refuse to be buried…” He gave a curt laugh.

  The River Garakhs was shallow, fast, and icy. It flowed between sandy banks, racing to escape from the desert. Burnell and Haydar stood looking at it, heads full of the kind of non-thoughts rivers evoke.

  For a short distance, this insignificant river acquired importance, as it marked a division between two distinct worlds: Turkmenistan to the north, Iran to the south. Here, for over half the previous century, the great iron world of the Soviet Union had expired and the more enduring world of the mosque commenced. Here, God, Marx and Lenin had surrendered in the face of the mountains and minarets of Muhammad.

  The main barrier between these worlds was the extended fortress of the Kopet Dagh mountain range, which ran for many kilometers in either direction. The monotonous flanks of the range loomed on the far side of the Garakhs, extending as far as eye could see, eroded, practically treeless, without habitation.

  On the Iranian side of the river, a settlement of mud-colored huts had established itself. A road led back from this settlement into the mountains, toward a pass, somewhere beyond which lay distant Teheran. Nothing moved on the far bank. The sky above the pass was black.

  On the northern side of the Garakhs, Turkmenistan presented no more enlivening a spectacle. The land was desert. As soon as they had left the capital, habitation petered out. It was as a hotel porter had told Burnell, in tones of contempt: Ashkhabad was thoroughly modern—beyond it, in the country, all was as it had ever been.

  Burnell took in the desolation with interest, letting the wind whip his hair.

  At one point on the way they had sighted derricks, where a Japanese oil company was prospecting. Once, by the roadside, they had passed a cluster of yurts, weather-beaten tents by which Akhaltekke horses were tethered. And, only a few miles from their destination, Burnell had watched a group of people trudging along beside loaded camels and mules—an archaic frieze soon left behind in the dust. Dust was an increasing problem as the wind fretted the land.

  The road from Ashkhabad, potholes and all, gave out as it reached the River Garakhs. There stood Friendship Bridge.

  “In the spring, after the seasonal rain, flowers come,” said Dr. Haydar, with a majestic sweep of his hand. “Then wild tulips are blooming here, plenteously. All the land is a patchwork of flowers, very colorful.” He leaned back against the bonnet of the Chaika, drumming with thick fingers on the enamel. “I remember it being so. Now—nothing; for the cold winter comes. You can feel it in the wind, undeniably.”

  Together, they walked toward the bridge.

  The Friendship Bridge was unfinished. Indeed, scarcely begun.

  The stub of it resembled some great failed animal from an earlier epoch of Earth’s history. It stuck its snout out a short way over the flood, blindly quizzing the Iranian shore.

  Its design was primitive. It had been constructed much as a child’s bridge might be constructed from wooden blocks. One stump of supporting pillar stood on the bank, a second in the river. Nothing more of it had been built. Over the stumps had been laid intimations of road in giant concrete slabs: an embryo road, no more than nine meters of it, already crumbling, the snout of the monster in decay.

  Burnell walked below the land end of the bridge. It jutted some meters above him, dislocated from the road below, with reinforcing rods trailing wormlike from the body of concrete. He struggled with the anger filling him. He saw no purpose in their visiting this abortive hulk of masonry. It had certainly not been worth two hours of travel over a bumpy road.

  “Let’s get back to town, Dr. Haydar. I have things I wish to do.”

  “Yes, yes, immediately. I see it’s not to your English taste. But first we must climb up onto the bridge. Then you will understand better, surely.”

  He led the way, heaving himself up an iron ladder, the rungs of which were stapled into the near pillar. For a large man he was very agile. Burnell felt obliged to follow. It was possible to swing up, grasp a girde
r, and heave oneself on to the flat part of the bridge. Clouds of dust met them. Lizards scuttled into hiding.

  They stood together, some meters above the ground. The height made them more aware of the wind. Shielding his eyes with a hand, Burnell said, “Look, we’d better be getting back.”

  A withered orange of sun cast gloom over the land. Temperatures were falling. It looked and felt like the end of the world.

  Haydar, however, was jaunty. “I know there are things in your mind, Dr. Burnell. We all of us have them. Once we are past our youth, all men have things in their minds. For women it is different, possibly. But we do not know what women think.” Walking to the end of the concrete structure, he gazed down into the gray waters below. Wind whipped open his jacket. His tie fluttered over one shoulder.

  “This bridge is called Friendship Bridge for some obvious reasons. The Turkmeni say for a joke the name is because, like friendship, it should never have been started but now will never finish… Huh. Not too humorous for your English taste, eh?”

  “I’ve lost my sense of humor… It’ll be dark in another hour.”

  “The founding stone of the bridge was laid by the late President of Turkmenistan, the predecessor of Diyanizov. He was a devout Sunni Muslim, an ayatollah. But the war swept him out of power. He died of a disease soon afterwards, as people do when swept from power. When the war with Uzbekistan started, President Diyanizov ordered work here to stop.

  “Of course it will never be resumed. We no longer wish to be so friendly to Iran since their recent changes in Teheran. Some here recall an old Goklani saying, ‘Iranian ponies have only three and a half legs.’ ”

  Some of his words were lost in the wind. Burnell turned his back on the gale. He spoke formally. “Dr. Haydar, a storm is brewing. Best to get back to Ashkhabad.”

  Haydar’s large face was powdered with dust. He shook his head sadly, disappointed at Burnell’s lack of perception. Turning his back to Iran and the river, he clutched his lapels preparatory to making a speech.

  “I think we are friends, although I know Mr. Murray-Roberts is not my friend. Or his excellent wife. So I do not bring you to this remote spot for an idle amusement. This place is what you must carry back with you in memory to England. The bridge is not a bridge but a memorial, you see. So it stands in my mind. I could say, it stands even for a victory for the West!” He tapped his broad forehead with the heel of his palm while speaking, for added solemnity.

  “Yes, a monument to the magnetic attraction of Western culture. That magnetism felt even in this poor tragic country, where no copy of The Hand of Ethelberta is to be had, for money or love.” Smiling to himself, perhaps in irony, he stared down at the pattern of wooden planking embedded like fossil imprints in the slab of road.

  “When the Soviet Union fell apart, many men wished to embrace Islam, but the pull of the West was even stronger. Happily, some men want not to abase toward Mecca five times in every day…”

  A battery of winds sprang up. Stinging sands were dashed against their faces and they were blown some way across the bridge. They crouched for shelter under a low parapet while the wind roared overhead.

  “When it is stopped, then we go back to my brother’s car,” Haydar said, his face close to Burnell’s. “These storms do not last a long time.”

  “It was madness to come out here with the weather changing.”

  Haydar laughed. “And maybe we are both mad to leave our own countries. Few will do it. To escape memories or to find them. Que sera sera, isn’t that what Italians say? You must try to appreciate what has befallen in this place, at a crucial moment in history, why I bring you here.

  “When Soviet Union collapsed, was a great day all over the world. Of course, for the Muslim republics, some difficulties came. Turkmenistan needs to trade, and trade became disrupted. But, frontiers were open, suddenly. Never before had they been open, except for some very old people. Freedom!—A strange word. Who among us is really free?

  “So. On that day of first freedom, a procession of ordinary people came here from Ashkhabad. My wife was among them, with some of her friends. They came along the road we have taken, to this very point, to look across at Iran. In previous times, you see, the frontier was forbidden—I mean, with patrols, who could shoot people who tried to cross it. And yet, in Iran, many people had relations.”

  From his crouched position, resting an elbow on the concrete, he imitated the action of someone firing a rifle.

  “It was a wonderful occasion on that day. You can imagine. Across the other side of the Garakhs, there appeared Iranian people. They came out from the mountains. They cheered to this side. This side cheered to them. Can you imagine? On that day were two thousand Turkmeni here, of all tribes, and maybe two hundred Irani over there. After all, same families are on both sides of the frontier. They were divided long since by that monster among men, Josef Stalin.

  “Prayers were said in rejoicing. Some of the youths from Ashkhabad, they strip off their clothes and swim across the river at this point. One young boy, no more than ten, he drowns and no one sees it till is too late. Otherwise, is all rejoicing. You can imagine. The people embrace, each to each, warmly. It was an occasion for many tears, Dr. Burnell, tears and kisses. Here, my wife stood. She waved to an older sister across the river. You can imagine.”

  He fell silent, letting the sand scour their ears. The lizards had disappeared, taking shelter in the cracks of the stonework.

  “One man among the Iranians brought a—loud-shouter? Yes, a loud-hailer. He calls out to this side some news. He calls names, telephone numbers, radio wavelengths. Names of lost relations are called across this very river on that day. Many people cried, cried because lives were so broken. You can imagine.

  “All that is spoken on each bank is—what do you call it?—reconciling words, quite private. No words of politics, because the people who came here were poor. No great ones with political interests, neiri?”

  As he talked on, Burnell saw how deeply mixed the feelings of the man were toward the country which was now his home. Did he hate or love Ashkhabad? Perhaps he would be unable to say.

  “The poor people congregated on both sides of the river, rejoicing. They stayed till the sun set. The date was the Thirteenth of Azar by the Muslim calendar.

  “At dusk, the young men swam back to this bank here. Some carried gifts from the Iranians, such as prayer beads and sweetmeats. The newspapers described the day as a day of seething emotions. There came demands that a bridge should be built to link the two countries, so that Muslim could speak to Muslim. A bridge of friendship!

  “So such a bridge was begun at last, under the old ayatollah president. What a fuss was made. Then some clever person observed that the Iranians did not build a road toward the bridge on their side, unfortunately. Instead, they became busy waging a war with the Muslims in their other neighbor, Iraq.

  “At that time, too, Turkmenistan had trouble with guerrillas invading from Afghanistan. So work on the bridge ceased. After the war with Uzbekistan, the new president came in. That’s Diyanizov, born in the same street as the old president, of the same Tekke tribe, but now looking toward the West, and for instance inviting in your World Cultural Heritage.”

  “And Western pornography,” said Burnell with feeling.

  “He has a wife from Argentina, don’t forget. So Diyanizov declared that the bridge was a political mistake. That is why I rejoice. I rejoice it’s never to be completed. The bridges to be built must not be southwards to Islam, or that means looking to the past. Instead, they must be built to the westwards—to Turkey and Hungary and Paris and England, where sin is more of a private thing and where judges are not mullahs. A look to the future.”

  To emphasize his meaning, he patted Burnell on the shoulder as if he were an old dog. They still crouched under the parapet, and the wind still blew. The sky grew darker. As he rambled on, his voice was sometimes drowned by the roar and whistle of the wind as it burst among the interstices of the bri
dge.

  This monstrous song of nature caused Burnell’s thoughts to wander. Gloom filled him. The bridge to him represented no great cause for rejoicing. He saw it as one more blighted crop in the tangled field of human relationships. To accept the bridge as a stone metaphor for his own present situation was beyond his conscious compass. But it bore down mutely on his awareness.

  In his work, he was accustomed to monuments that endured, structures whose venerable and refined qualities inspired reverence. This abortion of a bridge inspired only disgust. He could never rejoice in it, as he did in the buildings it was his duty to catalogue.

  Because there was melancholy as well as honor in his duties, his favorite reading had long included Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Able to recite whole passages of the old unbeliever by heart, particularly when slightly drunk, Burnell recalled now, crouching against the concrete, Gibbon’s reflections on transience. “The art of man is able to construct,” Gibbon had said, “monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence: yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time his life and his labors must equally be measured as a fleeting moment.”

  And if that labor should be to stock, without fuss, an airing-cupboard with fresh sweet clothes… It was important, surely, to remember that monument to a past love. Even if it was not his…

  Nothing of this could be explained to another person. Not to Haydar. Perhaps to Blanche.

  He saw his own life as no more than a worm cast in a vast tract of history. And his family? His grandfather had lived through the dissolution, peaceful on the whole—as on the whole the institution had been—of the British Empire. His father had lived through the collapse of the Communist Empire. He was himself passing his life in the years following those momentous events, during the expansionist phase of the EU superstate.